All Quiet on the Western Front. (15.)
Directed by Edward Berger
Starring Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic, Moritz Klaus and Daniel Brühl. In German and French with subtitles. Selected cinemas. Streaming on Netflix from 28th October. 147 mins.
Some people want to fill the world with anti-war films, and what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know, because here we go again. The 1930 Oscar-winning Hollywood adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel about the futility of trench warfare in WWI, essentially set the format for the anti-war movie. Berger’s film, the first of the three film versions to be in German adds a lot more to it than just subtitles; it’s a spectacular compendium of the last quarter century of war-is-hell movies, everything since Saving Private Ryan raised the bar. It even incorporates Roger Deakins's masterful rotating shadow shots from 1917.
It starts with five youngsters gleefully enlisting in 1917, inspired by the patriotic bluster of their teacher. This is a loose adaptation that concentrates the events of the novel into the days before the armistice in November 1918. While the comrades try to survive the last few days of the campaign, the film adds a strand where Brühl heads the German delegation trying to negotiate an honourable surrender with the unyielding French generals.
They are a bit futile, these futility of war films, each one convinced that if they can just make their simulated war scenes that little bit more degrading than all that has gone before, theirs will be the film to finally get humanity to see sense; the war film to end all war films. But, you can't deny that done well they make for incredible spectacles. All Quiet demands to be seen on a big screen but you'd better be quick because this is getting a very limited theatrical release before confinement on Netflix, which it’s already halfway through. (Don’t blame me - the preview screening I attended was after its release.)
It's the perfect statement on a war notorious for going on way beyond there was any point to it. Berger's film reaches a stage where, having made all its points and delivered all its dramatic ironies, it seems to have come to a natural conclusion. But then it just keeps going, dragging it out until all humanity and compassion is exhausted.
Directed by Edward Berger
Starring Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic, Moritz Klaus and Daniel Brühl. In German and French with subtitles. Selected cinemas. Streaming on Netflix from 28th October. 147 mins.
Some people want to fill the world with anti-war films, and what’s wrong with that, I’d like to know, because here we go again. The 1930 Oscar-winning Hollywood adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1928 novel about the futility of trench warfare in WWI, essentially set the format for the anti-war movie. Berger’s film, the first of the three film versions to be in German adds a lot more to it than just subtitles; it’s a spectacular compendium of the last quarter century of war-is-hell movies, everything since Saving Private Ryan raised the bar. It even incorporates Roger Deakins's masterful rotating shadow shots from 1917.
It starts with five youngsters gleefully enlisting in 1917, inspired by the patriotic bluster of their teacher. This is a loose adaptation that concentrates the events of the novel into the days before the armistice in November 1918. While the comrades try to survive the last few days of the campaign, the film adds a strand where Brühl heads the German delegation trying to negotiate an honourable surrender with the unyielding French generals.
They are a bit futile, these futility of war films, each one convinced that if they can just make their simulated war scenes that little bit more degrading than all that has gone before, theirs will be the film to finally get humanity to see sense; the war film to end all war films. But, you can't deny that done well they make for incredible spectacles. All Quiet demands to be seen on a big screen but you'd better be quick because this is getting a very limited theatrical release before confinement on Netflix, which it’s already halfway through. (Don’t blame me - the preview screening I attended was after its release.)
It's the perfect statement on a war notorious for going on way beyond there was any point to it. Berger's film reaches a stage where, having made all its points and delivered all its dramatic ironies, it seems to have come to a natural conclusion. But then it just keeps going, dragging it out until all humanity and compassion is exhausted.
