It was perhaps the greatest of all antiwar novels and in 1930 it became the greatest of all antiwar films and until this day that American film version, directed by Lewis Milestone, remains largely unsurpassed. In 1979 there was a television version directed by Delbert Mann which was given a cinema release in some countries and now Germany itself has tackled "All Quiet on the Western Front" in this epic version directed by Edward Berger..
It's all there; the multitudinous corpses, the dead animals, the mud in the trenches, the gas. What isn't there is Remarque's novel. For some reason Berger and fellow writers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell have chosen to veer away from the original though he does keep a few key incidents. As war films go, however, this one is certainly grimly realistic even if there is still something vaguely 'Hollywood' about it, brilliantly photographed but perhaps a little over-egged in the art direction department. The battle scenes may be among the finest ever filmed, (they are certainly among the most horrific), but maybe they are just 'too much'; never has the old adage 'War is Hell' been more appropriate. Berger has conjured up a hell on earth and on a huge scale. He makes his point and then he makes it again and again.
The film's hero is young Paul Baumer, (very well played by Felix Kammerer), who goes from idealistic schoolboy to battle-scared veteran almost overnight. He's joined in his living nightmare by 'Kat', (Albrecht Schuch, also very good), an older veteran but closer in age to be more of an older brother than a father figure as was Louis Wolheim to Lew Ayres in the original.
It very seldom leaves the battlefield except for those scenes with the high command and with Daniel Bruhl as the diplomat charged with trying to negotiate a ceasefire. A certain cynicism is the order of the day here that leaves a somewhat sour aftertaste. Is it as good as Milestone's version? No, but then less is more and sometimes the horrors left to our imagination are greater than all the blood and guts contemporary cinema can serve up. On a technical level it is very well done and I don't see it going away empty-handed at the Oscars but neither do I see it going down in history as one of the great (anti)war films.
