Movie Review: All Quiet On The Western Front

 Among my many historical knowledge gaps, one of the biggest ones lies in the post-World War I German period known as the Weinar Republic.  The period remains fascinating (and I think instructive) both in the fact that the inflation experienced is now used as the example of out of control inflation and the fact that out of Weimar Republic came Nazi Germany.  Surely there are lessons to be learned about how to not dissolve a society and create a worse problem.

But to get to the Weimar Republic, one first has to get through World War I.

All Quiet On The Western Front by Eric Maria Remarque was, at one time, required reading for high school English Literature classes and if you are of a certain generation, you remember reading the story about Paul Baumer, a young German man that enlists in the German army and his experiences both at the front and back in civilian society.  I somewhat remember the book; I also remember the 1979 television adaptation, mostly because it had Richard Thomas of "The Waltons" and "Battle Beyond The Stars" fame.

Last year a new remake came out on Netflix which I watched last week. And while I find unusual to recommend such a horrific story about war, I do not think I can recommend it enough.

The story again focuses on Paul Baumer, with the first scene being an attack across No-Man's land.  The attack is pretty much as horrible and pointless as you might imagine.  The story then reaches back to his background of enlistment (I remember this taking up more time in the book, but here it is less than five minutes of the film).  From there, the movie then takes a leap from his initial arrival at the front to 18 months later, in the early days of November 1918.

The film at this point veers from the book and we see two story lines:  in one story line, the countdown as the German delegation debates signing the Treaty of Versailles; on the other, Paul and his companions on the front as their Commander continues to press forward attacks in the face of what he sees as the betrayal of the Cause.

The battle scenes are intense and in that sense, horrifying - although the reality of them (and they appear pretty real) are likely still far from the actual conditions of the war.  Men die - a lot.  They die by being shot, they die by being stabbed, they die by gas, they die by being bludgeoned, they die by flamethrower, they die by shells, they die by grenades.  

They all die.

At one point one of the attacks, French Tanks arrive.  I do not believe I have ever seen a representation of what actual tanks in World War I would have looked like.  They are as terrifying in the movie as they must have been in real life.

One other place the movie varies from the book is that Paul does not return home and undergo the awkwardness of seeing civilian life versus the battlefield.  Perhaps the Versailles delegation was meant to do this without breaking the continuity of the film; certainly switching back and forth from the battlefield to a drawing room in a train car or a dinner is just as representative.  And while in the end there is some discussion between Paul and Kat, another main character, about what they will do after the War, it does not carry the same impact I remember from the book when Paul is with his father's friends at a Biergarten and they cannot and do not want to understand his world.

One note:  The movie is a German one and thus 90% of the dialogue is in German, except for those parts that are in French.  High School German still served me well, I could understand at least 50% of the movie.  Frau G would be proud.

As I have said, this movie is horrifying, brutal, and realistic.  Why would I recommend it?

First of all, it really is a well made movie.  It is tight and well directed.  There is nothing that is extraneous to the plot, even if that meant that modifying the story from the book.  The descent of Paul from enthusiastic recruit to battle weary veteran to man without a future is convincing.

Second of all, it smacks of realism.  The sets are convincing.  The attacks pull you in - at one point, A the Cat looked up at me in reproach as I got a little over enthusiastic and involved in the movie and disturbed his resting place.  The confusion and terror of charging a trench with bullets and shells flying made me crouch.  

And the tanks.  Oh, the tanks.

The third reason is that it brings to the fore the waste of war.

As part of the opening sequences, we see bodies being pulled from an cart, then placed on the ground and stripped. We follow the stripped uniform as it goes back from the front to be washed, dried and sewn.  The uniform is issued to Baumer upon his enrollment.  He comes back to his recruiter, saying that he was issued the wrong uniform as someone else's name is in it.  The recruiter takes the uniform back, removes the nametag, and gives it back to Baumer;  likely it was too small, he tells Baumer.  It happens all the time.

We know better, of course.

I recommend this movie to every D*!# (word used decidedly) fool that calls for war or violence to solve a problem, to every politician and leader that has not seen war and will not see war, but sees war as the only option.  I recommend it to everyone else as reminder of what war really is:  not the video games we see, not the movies that so often grace the screen, but for the ugly, terrifying, wasteful horror that it is.

Everyone starts a war believing they will win it.  No-one really anticipates the actual cost, until the lives are spent and the money is gone, a generation has been decimated, and the-what-might-have-been's become the reality of broken men, broken economies, broken culture, and a broken state.