Stream It Or Skip It: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ on Netflix, a Vital, Intense Adaptation of the Classic Novel

All Quiet on the Western Front (now on Netflix) marks the third time Erich Maria Remarque’s classic 1929 novel has been adapted for film. Director Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film won Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, and if Edward Berger’s new take on this story about a German soldier’s experiences during World War I finds some promotional traction in the coming months, it might have an outside shot at following suit.

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A peaceful morning. The forest is crisp with the chill of early spring and tinted blue. A family of foxes huddles in a den, sleeping peacefully. An overhead shot of an open expanse comes into focus: Bodies, nipped by frost. Soldiers. In the German trenches, a soldier named Heinrich is ordered to climb up and out and dash across a sloppy muddy hellscape. Terror on his face. Bullets zing by. Men around him fall. Explosions kick up dirt. Haze. Heinrich doesn’t make it. The next morning, a man grasps Heinrich’s body and strips off his coat and boots. The coat is stuffed in a large laundry bag, which is delivered to laundresses who wash the garments in a giant vat of water tinted red with blood. North Germany. 1917. The third year of the war.

A city, bustling, far from the battle. A group of boys who are barely men laugh and tease each other and are riled into a competitive nationalistic fervor. They sign up to fight and are convinced they’ll soon stomp victoriously through Paris. Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer) steps up to receive his fatigues. His coat has a nametag in it: Heinrich. He shows it to the clerk who tears it out and explains that it must have been too small for that soldier and this happens all the time. Something to do with this situation happens all the time, and it’s not getting an ill-fitting coat.

Before long Paul and his friends blur into the drab gray-green ranks of the Kaiser’s infantry, assembled at the Western Front, a seemingly endless line of trenches cutting through France. To call the scene chaos is to perversely understate what happens there: In an attempt to push the front forward, German men are ordered to charge through the sloppy bombed-out no-man’s-land and murder French soldiers. Paul peeks over the edge of the trench and fires his rifle and the return fire pings madly off his helmet and knocks him backward off his perch. He soon dashes through the mud and smoke and somehow survives the tumult, which appears to have accomplished nothing. Later he sits blankly in the trench and another soldier offers him a miserable chunk of dry bread and he takes it and wolfs it down. A superior asks Paul if he’s OK and upon the affirmative reply orders him to collect tags from dead soldiers. One of them is Paul’s friend, leg mangled, eyes mottled and glassy.

Eighteen months pass. In an office, one man scrapes dried blood off the tags and reads off the names and birthdates and another man writes them down. A German general with grotesque mustaches callously gulps wine and tosses the excess on the floor and throws a large morsel of his bounteous dinner to his dog and lusts for war and conflict, for he’s a soldier and he knows nothing else. German defeat is at hand, and in a railcar, a weary but tidily dressed politician (Daniel Bruhl) meets to discuss armistice with French military leaders who are in no mood to compromise: sign the accord in 72 hours and don’t even think about negotiating. Elsewhere, Paul is somehow still alive and stealing a goose from a French farmer with his friend Kat (Albrecht Schuch) – nee Katczinsky – so they may at last feast with their friends. These men will continue to have inglorious adventures under the orders of their superiors seated in safe zones. Has the Western Front budged? Barely. One thing has changed, though – Paul is a killer many times over now.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: This Western Front brings some of the grisly wartime horror of Saving Private Ryan and blends it with Sam Mendes’ WWI epic 1917 (which is an unavoidable comparison). Some moments here seem to be informed by scenes from Peter Jackson’s remarkable documentary They Shall Not Grow Old.

Performance Worth Watching: Kammerer’s portrayal of a greenhorn barely clinging to his last drop of hope is surely memorable, but Schuch’s take on the older soldier, illiterate with a family wracked with tragedy, is the deeper, more resonant character and performance.

Memorable Dialogue: Paul’s friend Ludwig exercises further terrible understatement when he shares his first impression of the front: “This isn’t how I imagined it.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Berger’s iteration of All Quiet on the Western Front depicts war as an unquenchable industry of death – the recycled uniforms, the repetitive attacks, day after day of hunger and exhaustion and sickness and trauma. Occasionally, the ominous synths of Volker Bertelmann’s minimalist score booms, and the bell that tolls for thee sounds like deafening, angry machinery. The photography is cold and when Paul does his job and is therefore lost inside fits of fury and madness, his face is frequently coated with mud or ash that makes him look inhuman, like an alien monster, the warped slurry that’s a byproduct of such gruesome manufactory.

Remarque insisted that his novel simply illustrated the stark experiences of a soldier at war, and took no political stand (notably, the book was banned in Nazi Germany). But I can’t fathom this film version being anything but an anti-war polemic. It purposely keeps the details of how and why the Germans are on the offense whittled down to simple jingoism. The repulsive general is a crass powermonger lost so deep in his own crevasse, when staring into the abyss of the nationalist lost cause, he sends his minions into battle to satisfy only his personal sociopathic desires; in his crass demeanor, one senses the utterly senseless escalatory impulses of the worst components of men that lead to such brutality. Contrast that with Bruhl’s negotiator, whose son died for Germany, and who pleads with any who’ll listen to please, for the love of mercy, end the slaughter as soon as possible.

Berger’s direction is vigorous and propulsive, his visuals artful even in moments of abject horror. It’s par for the course that modern war films forego rah-rah patriotism for realistm, and the director meets that standard without being indulgent or excessive, with practical and digital effects merging almost seamlessly. The violence never ceases to be sobering, a key component in rendering the film an engrossing and memorable experience. The chilly manner in which Berger balances that violence with moments of peace is eerie and disquieting, pushing past Paul’s trauma to an existential darkness you hope you’ll never, ever face.

Our Call: STREAM IT. All Quiet on the Western Front reiterates what we understand war to be: Abominable. We’ve seen and heard such missives before, yes. But as long as there still is war, they’ll continue to be tragically relevant.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com.