Ever since the Omaha beach landing sequence in Saving Private Ryan, the word ‘visceral’ has come to be associated with a certain genre that revels in the ‘bombs bursting in mud, debris flying, limbs severed, guts hanging out’ school of war films. Multiply that almost-five-minute sequence a few times and what you have is Edward Berger’s version of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war masterpiece, All Quiet on the Western Front. Which is not such a bad thing if what you are looking for is that kind of take on war-as-hell.
But if what you seek is more material insight into the characters, their inner worlds, their motivations (or lack thereof), their fears and fantasies, a little more of personal drama in the entirely impersonal theatre of war, All Quiet on the Western Front circa 2022, despite its visual emphasis on the horrors of warfare, may be, ironically, too quiet. Berger’s film probably makes the error of making the graphic representation of warfare a measure of its integrity. In essence that renders it a tad too tidy and at the same time too in-your-face a war film.
That said, this is not in any way a bad film. It is competent in the way it plays out, the battle ‘action’ is rather brilliantly choreographed, with a background score that’s appropriately dissonant. Consider, for example, a 20-minute sequence starting with the discussions on the armistice between German vice-chancellor Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) and the French generals, and ending with Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer) repeatedly stabbing an enemy soldier who dies an agonisingly prolonged death.
The frenzy and horror of war
Almost wordless, the sequence brings out the frenzy and the horror of war – the terror in the trenches, tanks trampling over bodies, soldiers making a desperate run across the battlefield, almost echoing Tennyson’s ‘into the valley of death’, the sadly comical sight of them coming across a larder and stopping to stuff themselves as rats scurry out by the dozen. It’s just that it never quite makes – though comparisons are odious – the statement that great war films like Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory (probably the greatest cinematic depiction of life in the trenches) and Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line (at 160 minutes Berger’s film almost matches Malick’s in length) do.
This sequence itself contains an insight into what’s amiss in Berger’s version. Daniel Brühl’s Erzberger, in his negotiations for the ceasefire, brings out the resentment the German officers feel at having to go down on their knees, containing in it the seed for the next great war. Erzberger is a character you get to know and relate to in the course of the narrative. In contrast, Bäumer, Kropp, Ludwig, Mueller, Tjaden, Katczinsky – probably among the most well-known group of comrades in war fiction – barely register as individuals. It can be argued that warfare renders the individual immaterial, and that these faces are interchangeable. But I am not quite sure the director wanted that or that is the message the film seeks to convey. In fact, one of the film’s sequences that stand out in memory is the one where Bäumer reads out a letter for Katczinsky; there’s a glimpse into the interior lives of these comrades that does not quite come through in the more urgent carnage sequences.
Strangely enough, it’s the first German-language adaptation of the novel
Remarque’s novel is of course too well-known to be recounted here. Published barely 10 years after World War I ended, its title (the literal rendition, ‘Nothing new in the West’, was given this lyrical touch by Arthur Wesley Wheen) has now become idiomatic. The book was first adapted for the screen in 1930 by Lewis Milestone, in what is even now considered one of Hollywood’s great achievements. Even though viewers used to the many technological achievements in cinema will probably be left cold at the lack of intimate ‘action’, the 1930 version boasts some indelible images of warfare.
Rivalling the 20-minute sequence referenced above in Berger’s film is one in Milestone’s, similarly wordless, at the 30-minute mark: the platoon facing a barrage of bombings in an underground bunker, before venturing out into the trenches to a version of hell that Milestone creates with a series of pioneering tracking and pan shots that progressively zoom in to soldiers running towards the barbed wire, accompanied by the ratatat of machine guns and the dull thud of bombs hitting the ground. It is as hard-hitting as any sequence in the new film.
Strangely enough, this is the first German-language adaptation of the novel (there is even a TV movie, circa 1979, directed by Dilbert Mann, and starring Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine and Donald Pleasance). That in itself provides a unique perspective. The 1930 film had American actors and the drawl in their accent does sound strange. It is, however, a landmark that stands out for putting on screen the kind of anti-war sentiment and representation of warfare that would not be possible only four years later when the Motion Picture Production Code took effect in 1934. Consider the pair of disembodied hands on a wire, the remains of a soldier blown to bits. Milestone heard of this from veterans of the war and put it in the film for a startling dose of authenticity that would go missing from Hollywood once the Code took effect. Berger’s version comes from a very specific place and a personal legacy of, in the words of the filmmaker, ‘guilt and shame and responsibility towards history’, making for a ‘very German movie in German with German actors from a German novel’.
Points of departure between the two films and the novel
There are substantial differences between the two versions as also the novel. Berger does away with Bäumer’s life before the war entirely. There is no Professor Kantorek fuelling the boys’ romantic idealism of war – in fact, Bäumer forges his father’s signature to get into the army. Also missing is the furlough that Bäumer gets because of an injury which leads him to return home briefly, and which makes him aware of how his life has changed forever. In Berger’s screenplay, Bäumer is placed bang in the middle of the war at the outset and put through a wringer with no reprieve.
You get to see more of the faces in Lewis Milestone’s film. There’s a heart-rending sequence in it involving the boots of a young soldier, Kemmerich, whose leg has been amputated. His comrade Mueller wants it and cannot stop himself from mentioning it to Kemmerich. There follows a wonderful montage of the boots in the thick of warfare. This kind of personal detailing does not come through in Berger’s version, which often becomes a blur of relentless butchery, though it tries something similar with a handkerchief that one of the comrades has received from a girl he spends a night with, and which is passed around the barracks for the friends to sniff.
The circumstances of Bäumer’s death are also different in the two adaptations. The 2022 iteration has Bäumer being forced back into combat after the death of his mentor-friend Katczinsky, and being stabbed to death in close combat (Berger seems hell-bent on rubbing in the horrors of war). Lewis Milestone has him succumbing to a sniper shot while reaching out for a butterfly, which makes for a marked and lyrical contrast. Katczinsky’s death too differs, with Berger’s take on it, having him shot by a farmer’s boy for the ‘trivial’ act of stealing a goose, not quite cutting ice.
Berger also adds material not existing in either Remarque’s novel or in the 1930 film – the entire track involving Matthias Erzberger (a real-life figure) brokering peace with the French and others. While this does seem to be making a point about ‘good Germans’ and the ‘humiliation’ of the Germans which will lead to the next war, it also serves the narrative need to keep the suspense going: will the ceasefire come to effect in time for the protagonists?
Bound by their approach to the inhumanity of war
Another notable difference lies in the music. The 1930 Hollywood film, uniquely for its time, was almost entirely devoid of background music, though later cuts of the film added music (against the director’s wishes), before being restored to its original glory. Berger’s film is highlighted by Volker Bertelmann’s ominous score which is among its Oscar nominations.
But what binds the two adaptations and its novel is its approach to the inhumanity of war. In a note on the book, the author wrote, ‘It is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped (its) shells, were destroyed by the war.’ Close to a hundred years later, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, that message seems terrifyingly contemporary.
‘How does one start a war?’ Asks one of Bäumer’s comrades in one of the most telling scenes of the 1930 version (missing from the 2022 one). ‘One country offends another,’ replies another. ‘How does one do that – does a mountain in Germany offend a field in France?’ asks the first comrade. ‘War is a kind of fever… nobody wants it, but it’s there,’ says another, summarising the debate. The answer to ‘How does one start a war’ is still blowing in the wind.
(Shantanu Ray Chaudhuri is a film and music buff, editor, publisher, film critic and writer)
