Children of the Grave

All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

Stumbling upon something worth watching on Netflix is a rare treat, since the streaming site tends be the bastion of all things shite in my world. Lo and behold then that Edward Berger's German language adapation of Erich Remarque's anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front is a harrowing and compelling film worthy of praise.

From the wide-eyed naivety of Paul Bäumer and his patriotic school mates; gleefully enlisting as grunts in the war to end all wars, to the corpses of young men strewn across the muddy battlefield, All Quiet on the Western Front is a descent into hell that left a sobering impression upon me well after the final credits. Ultimately, it's a distressing tale which loses none of its poignancy even nearing a century on. It might not be as faithfull as Lewis Milestone's film from 1930, but Berger's update is still a very respectable effort.

Two stories are conveyed in All Quiet on the Western Front: the main one being the daily horrors faced by Bäumer in the trenches; while the other is about the Armistice agreement. What's darkly disturbing is how a few men situated in a railway carriage can be bickering over the terms for peace while the butchering continues en masse. What's even more sickening is a blood thirsty general ordering his soldiers to storm the trenches one final time just before the eleventh hour. Gut-wrenching.

As much as I admire Sam Mendes' 1917 (2019), I much prefer Berger's more focused anti-war message rather than gimmicky one-shots; it's still shot superbly, regardless. Bizarrely, All Quiet on the Western Front reminded me of Phil Tippett's animated fantasy horror Mad God (2022) since they both share similar themes of perpetual insanity. Both released this year and both apocalyptic in scope.The catastrophic carnage of seeing soldiers who are barely even men suffer and die is both mortifying and relentless, that it even leaves someone like me sickened by it. A horrifying film, but an effectively important one.