All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Throughout the awards season, we’ll get around to some much-discussed films that we didn’t previously review.
In the 1930 anti-war classic, All Quiet on the Western Front, we are left on a lingering image of a soulless soldier who is now back at war. He stares at a butterfly that approaches him: the first signs of life and joy that he has experienced in ages. This vision happens right before his ultimate demise after watching every single person he has ever cared about die around him. He was recruited as a young boy via a promising pitch alongside his fellow students, and he headed into World War I with a grin. The rest of the film was nothing but pain and agony, and it ends with this symbol of despair: a world void of a soul. This war epic was a warning to not fall for the propaganda: that war isn’t purely rewarding and in any way joyful, and that there is a real seriousness surrounding the lies our next generations are being told. War is scary, and those that choose to fight acknowledge the risks and dangers of it, all in the name of serving their country. All Quiet on the Western Front may be entirely against war, sure, but it also provided an angle of the irresponsibility of dishonest recruitment, considering the wide-eyed, impressionable youths that want to take part.
Fast forward to 2022 (ninety one years later), as we now have a new version of All Quiet on the Western Front to consider now. This isn’t an adaptation of Lewis Milestone’s classic, but rather another approach to the same source novel (Erich Maria Remarque’s iconic book), and the one thing that this version automatically gets right is the German context (this film is actually spoken in German and is German made by director Edward Berger). Otherwise, it’s easy to dart directly to the elder film as the better of the two, but that’s almost always a given when you consider an established classic that has influenced a genre for decades with a newer release that has studied from the lessons of the former. So comparing the two films is relatively futile, but it is important to at least know why Berger’s latest update feels necessary.
This is because there is a drastically different approach taken here, down to Berger tossing in a secondary subplot that isn’t from the original novel: an ongoing quest from a military official to accomplish an armistice. I feel like this latest All Quiet on the Western Front forgoes all of the post-war trauma, the slow descent from promise-land towards madness and brutality, and the destruction of innocence from the previous film. This is in favour of an idea that the 1930 classic doesn’t really have at all: how easily war could be stopped. As we watch negotiations take place, we see countless lives being lost in the most extreme ways (that’s something both films share: the extremities of horror on the battlefield). Time is of the essence, and every ounce of stubbornness results in dozens of deaths. It’s an interesting touch that separates Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front enough to warrant the end of any additional comparisons.
Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front is different enough from the 1930 classic to warrant existing. Nevertheless, both films’ statements on the horrors of war are still relevant to be heard.
Despite being conscious of the concept of time, this All Quiet on the Western Front feels at least a little bit overlong (it clocks in at just under two and a half hours), but I do feel like the majority of what we see, despite being all similar (various forms of war based atrocities and deaths), feel necessary to see. It can feel a little monotonous still, with the same ideas and concepts being fed to us again and again. However, I feel like there is enough going on that makes all of the film feel worthwhile, and this goes far beyond the exquisite photography, effects, and battle choreography. There’s a pulse throughout the film, as if you can feel it throb as the film keeps going. As it marches forth, its anti-war sentiments only get louder and louder.
It’s easy to love All Quiet on the Western Front as a technical spectacle, a lesson in acting, and an emotional portrait. I’m not quite sure if it will leave as large of a legacy on the war film genre like many films that came before it, especially when it feels nearly impossible to not instantly latch onto the other film that’s based on the same source material (and has impacted cinema for nearly a century). To watch the 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front once is a must just to see what it is all about. You’re bound to be affected watching it because of how relentless it is. Whether it becomes a modern staple of war cinema will be entirely dependant on how it resonates with you. For me, it’s a speech I’ve heard before, but it’s at least engaging enough to keep my interest and with enough sincerity to know that Berger always had the best intentions with this All Quiet on the Western Front: not to capitalize on a legacy that already exists, but to offer his own concerns when it comes to how humans continuously kill one another only to barely progress geographically, politically, or as a species.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Toronto Metropolitan University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.