More than 9 decades ago, specifically in 1929, while the nightmare of World War II was chasing humanity, the novel "All Quiet on the Western Front" by German writer Erich Maria Remarque was published and achieved wide spread, after it sparked great controversy and encouraged the American director of Russian origin Louis Milestones was able to release the first motion picture adaptation the following year (1930).

At the time, the film was a landmark in early American sound filmmaking, and the first stunning epic warning of the horrors of war.

Critic Peter Bradshaw considered him a major inspiration for the absurd madness that was portrayed by most anti-war works later, led by "Catch-22", which was produced in 1970.

Unlike what we are accustomed in war films to shed light on a specific aspect of the war, this two-and-a-half-hour film presented a panoramic picture of the war in all its aspects, bearing in mind its brutal massacres, through a realistic and horrible military report by Australian translator Arthur Wynn, who concluded by saying, "The Front Gharbia is quiet, because everyone in it is dead."

The film won two "Oscars" and achieved mass success to the extent that it was believed that it would be a deterrent to any future war "before it became clear that this was wrong, and that the writer Remarque himself did not intend to write a peaceful will, as much as he wanted to portray the suffering of the young recruits in the war." says critic Glenn Kelly.

Repeated warning of the horrors of war

Despite the failure of the film and the novel to extinguish the fire of a second world war that took place “in filth, insects and despair,” as critic Wendy Eddy described it, about 10 years after their release;

The war thickened the land with wounds, and irrigated it with the blood of 4 times the dead who died in its predecessor, and a television version of the film was re-released by the "gloomy" American director Delbert Mann, nearly half a century later (1979), and one month before the Russian invasion of Afghanistan.

And here we are, nearly a century after the publication of the novel, in front of the first German-made version of the movie “All quiet on the western front” (2022), by German director and writer Edward Berger, which Bradshaw described as “strong, eloquent and emotional.” .

The new film received high ratings when it was shown for the first time last October on the “Netflix” platform, and Germany adopted it as the official film representing it in the Oscars competition for this year, amid a charged global atmosphere, almost similar to the one that caused his first cry.

The film repeats its warning of the scourge of wars without despair, through scenes that contain a level of violence that no mind can imagine, hoping that this time it will succeed in helping humanity to renounce war and delinquency towards peace.

Brutal opening

There is perhaps nothing quite like the shiver of this brutal opening sequence that moves from landscapes, tranquil forests and mountains, sunrise and suckling fox puppies, to an aerial view of smoke clearing from a group of corpses, then a volley of bullets suddenly penetrating the almost motionless composition, before it turns The camera is to show the full extent of carnage and mud, "as if intended to unnerve us with the relentless brutality of war, to violate nature", as critic Ben Koenigsberg describes.

The film traces the bloody, bullet-riddled vests to a military laundry, "to make stark evidence that a soldier's life is worth less than the uniform in which he died," critic Wendy Eddy says.

Paul receives his military uniform in a hurry, "after it was removed from the body of a dead soldier, one size larger, after it had been washed and darned, and his name was still on the collar," according to Bradshaw, who sees the film as "a substantial and serious work, and a drama flavored with the dark obsession with death, which embodied battlefield scenes with urgency." and focus, and she completely succeeded in getting her message across.”

Berger (the director) used state-of-the-art technology "to catapult us into carnage that looks so realistic it feels like it's going to damage your hearing," says Kelly.

The film is about a real-life character, Paul Boehmer (Austrian rising actor Felix Kammerer), a teenage German boy whose patriotic feelings, fueled by an overzealous patriotic teacher, invites young men to join the army and save the country. He joins his school friends, imagining that he will go On an easy and joyful trip to Paris, without it occurring to him that a nightmare of chaos and bloodshed awaits him there, and that everything they have learned of culture and progress will be destroyed under the bombing in the trenches.

Peak nausea

German negotiators, led by Vice-Chancellor Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühldur), reach an armistice agreement with the French.

Although Erzberger is a non-existent character in the novel, the director added it, in the context of suspense and "excitement of the audience eager for the armistice to take effect, to save the characters he has become sympathetic to."

The film shows that there are some "good Germans" who are inclined to peace, to balance the audience's expected sympathy for the hero, Paul, a German soldier.

It also documents the intransigence of the French, recalling the humiliation suffered by Germany for years because of the armistice agreement, which was the reason for the rise of Hitler," according to Kelly's analysis.

The story reaches a nauseating climax after the signing of the armistice, when Berger sets us before Paul, a wide-eyed symbol of innocence, wracked with utter terror, his face covered in a fearful mask of blood and slime, numb with hunger and shock, as he watches his friends massacred one by one.

Despite this, he still sticks to one thing, which is to "fight hate that no longer makes sense".

Shocked by his commanding officer, enraged by the French Marshal Ferdinand Foch's (Thibaut de Montalembert) contemptuous refusal to grant any concessions to the Germans, he orders his weary troops to fight one last battle to save the country's honor, before the armistice takes effect, to which Paul says, "I am a young man of 20, but I do not know about Life is nothing but despair, death, fear, and absurd superficiality that makes me over the abyss of sadness."