War wreaks blood, death, and loss. The Centopath in London and the Thiepval Memorial in France commemorate those that fell between 1914 and 1918 during the First World War, with thousands of cemeteries and churches around the world also housing memorials with lengthy registers of those lost in battle. Millions of names carved into stone and wood, forever remembered for their bravery.
While the names of the so-called “Great War” casualties have been inscribed into history, the very nature of their deaths was forever etched onto the walls of the minds of their surviving comrades. For they were the forgotten, for they were the walking dead. Those that lived to see the dawn of the armistice didn’t just live out the rest of their lives bearing the superficial scars from the shrapnel, bullets, and shells, but also the psychological wounds of the terrors that ensued in front of their very eyes, the daily horrors, witnessed in high-definition.
Director Edward Berger’s remake of the wartime classicAll Quiet on the Western Front, which premiered onNetflixon Friday (Oct. 28th), is a horrifying portrayal of the barbarity of 20th-century war, seen from the disbelieving eyes of an adolescent German soldier, Paul. It tells the tale of a group of German soldiers, with these dreamy preconceptions and ideals of war. Signing up against their parents' better judgment, they are plunged into the utter chaos of the war-torn Western Front.
The Innocence of Youth and the Impurity of War on the Western Front
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However, as German officer and negotiator Matthias Erzberger (Marvel star Daniel Bruhl) reiterates, “Honor? My son died in the war, and he doesn’t feel any honor!” He is all too familiar with the perils of conflict. Arguably, one of the most haunting scenes ina war moviefull of them is unbeknownst to the four boys as they sign away their lives on the dotted line, they are handed the uniforms of dead German soldiers, with their name tags ripped out. As the young soldiers enter the front line, the heavens open, with machine gun fire raining down on them, and the sound of bombs falling from above leads to the dawning realization that war is definitely no school trip, nor is it for the faint-hearted. “I want to go home,” cries Ludwig (one of the four).
Berger’s depiction of the war employs a no holds barred approach —All Quiet on the Western Frontis a damning, blood-soaked indictment of inter-country conflict. It’s a film that doesn’t shy away from the graphic imagery of limbless men dying excruciatingly in shell-made craters, or corpses hanging soullessly in the barbed-wired planes of no man’s land. Like the soldiers praying for divine intervention, we sit fingers-crossed, hoping the film ends prematurely so that we can also be spared from witnessing further atrocities.
Young Paul is the film’s token of spoiled chastity. From the fresh, unworldly look on his face, clean-cut with the glowing shellac of youth, to the mud and blood-caked exterior of an unrecognizable man bludgeoned by the abhorrent cruelty of what he has not only seen, but of the acts he has committed.
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Perhaps the most poignant scene in the film is the confrontation between Paul and a French soldier; embroiled in a harrowing act of hand-to-hand combat, the pair struggle in swampy mud before Paul brandishes a dagger striking his opponent fatally. It’s here we observe the humanity of not just Paul, but of the millions of soldiers that were involved, he belches out into the atmospheric haze as he watches his victim gasp for his final breaths, while he attempts to circumvent the blood filling his lungs. In a lasting act of compassion, Paul retrieves the man’s personal items including a picture of the Frenchman’s wife and daughter; this is whereAll Quiet on the Western Frontdelivers its verdict on the true cost of war and the ripple effect it has on those that were lost.
A Quiet Beauty in the Bloodshed
Berger along with cinematographer James Friend superbly capture these very still portraits of natural environments, presumably during dawn. From the peaceful treetops of a Northern French woodland to a kit sleeping alongside its mother. We are reminded of the neutrality and tranquility of peace before overhead shots of the dead piled up at mass burial sites and the stripping and redistribution of their uniforms are displayed.
Thevisually stunning cinematographyis simply breathtaking, and the filmmakers do a brilliant job at offering moments of temporary reprieve through shots of picturesque scenery before they jump back, head-first into the screams and suffering of what is unfolding. The harsh and repeated instrumental accompaniment of a blaring snare drum and the somber electronic music really add to the impending sense of death, and the inevitability of tragedy. You can watchAll Quiet on the Western Fronton Netflix now.
