All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix version

[RichardsProductions99]

Well I finally sat down to watch this on Netflix the other night, having tried to avoid seeing the reviews and opinions on the film/go into it with an open mind.

Visually it's a stunning film, extremely graphic (but then war is bloody!) and some interesting/powerful bits. As an example I thought the journey of the battered and bloodied recycled uniform was an interesting way to start the film, and cyclical structure about the new boy retrieving the ID tags.

Unfortunately aside that, having read the book and seen the 1930 version, as many were, I was a bit disappointed in this (what could loosely be described as) adaptation.

Aside deleting/re-jigging most of the plot of the novel (and of course with any adaptation, cuts etc sometimes need to be made), the entire changing of the ending irked me.

The whole added-in premise of the countdown to Armistice, the scenes in the railway carriage thrashing out the terms seems just an attempt to add in excess drama, when the source material was already strong enough. I mean AQOTWF is a book focusing on ordinary soldiers like Paul, Tjaden, Kat etc, not generals and politicians.

It's the 'ticking clock' syndrome in film, like 1917 or Dunkirk, always a time-pressure thing that's over-done to extremes.

Aside that, as has been pointed out, the killed just before 11 concept is rather at odds with 'All Quiet' and the ending of the original text.

I suppose the stark, 'undramatised' book ending wouldn't have sat well with general audiences who just want action and blood (of which they get plenty in the film!) but then again, personally I think it'd be even more hard-hitting to follow the suddenness of the book's last passage.

There are numerous ways I think it could've been done, with more subtlety and poignancy, but then as I said, the film industry sometimes seems to think audiences need to be spoon-fed the drama.

Whether that's true or not, who knows!

Aesthetically strong but lacking substance I think is what I'd say; unlike the afore-mentioned Journey's End, which is an incredible adaptation.

Edited 27 February , 2023 by RichardsProductions99

[squirrel]

On 23/02/2023 at 13:24, geraint said:

I enjoyed the film as a WW1 film. I'm not too bother about inaccuracies, it certainly wasn't the AQOTWF that I read avidly back in the 70s (The Pan version with a yellow butterfly landing on an out-stretched hand and forearm. What happened to the leave back home and a proud father showing Paul off to his drinking mates? Wasn't there a brilliant scene in the book about the lads diarrhoea after eating that goose, and playing cards all day on the latrine bench? And the flirting and dating those willing French girls for food by swimming the river? Wasn,t the teacher conscripted to their unit and beaten up by some of them? It seemed to me to be a very different story!

PS In one film version did Ernest Borgnine play Katz?

See my post from Wednesday ref. the buttefly...It was their postman, Korporal Himmelstoss, who was beaten up.

[knittinganddeath]

Nicholas Barber is unstinting in his criticism of AQOTWF in an opinion piece for The Guardian:

Quote

Along with his co-writers, Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell, [director] Berger removes everything subtle in the book and replaces it with something absurdly bombastic, as befits a Prestigious, Important War Movie. He also omits an astonishing number of the book’s key episodes, and shoves in just as many new ones of his own. These changes may be annoying if you’re a Remarque purist, or a German film critic. But they’re also troubling in and of themselves.

Quote

The most questionable of Berger’s inventions is to have Paul himself dying after being stabbed in the back by a French soldier. The director ought to be aware of the “stab-in-the-back myth”, which claimed that the German army was not defeated in the first world war, but was betrayed by Jews, socialists and the cowardly politicians who signed the armistice for their own selfish reasons.

Here's another article from The Guardian from last month. It sums up the German reaction to the movie. German critics are quite in agreement with the GWF's verdict, and perhaps even more merciless.

Quote

Even the tabloid Bild, hardly known as a haven of art-house snobbery, published a hatchet job. “There are good literary adaptations and there are bad ones, and then there is All Quiet on the Western Front by director Edward Berger,” Bild’s critic wrote.

 

Edited 27 February , 2023 by knittinganddeath

[Marco]

With all this bad press it will likely be a box office success.

[phil andrade]

RichardsProductions99 made a comment a few posts back that really wins my approval.

 

The outstanding feature of the film - in my recollection- is the series of vignettes at the beginning which focus on the recycling of the uniforms recovered from the dead and dying soldiers.

 

This is not a sarcastic statement : far from it.

 

It makes a unique impact, and serves to remind us of the gruesome measures that a famished and deprived society had recourse to as the blockade did its work.

 

As to whether this is true or not, I don’t know.

 

But as a cinematic ploy I reckon it was striking and successful, with its implication about massacre and hardship, and how these combined as the bloody uniforms were being put through the mill, just as millions of men were, too.

 

Phil

[AOK4]

20 minutes ago, phil andrade said:

RichardsProductions99 made a comment a few posts back that really wins my approval.

 

The outstanding feature of the film - in my recollection- is the series of vignettes at the beginning which focus on the recycling of the uniforms recovered from the dead and dying soldiers.

 

This is not a sarcastic statement : far from it.

 

It makes a unique impact, and serves to remind us of the gruesome measures that a famished and deprived society had recourse to as the blockade did its work.

 

As to whether this is true or not, I don’t know.

 

But as a cinematic ploy I reckon it was striking and successful, with its implication about massacre and hardship, and how these combined as the bloody uniforms were being put through the mill, just as millions of men were, too.

 

Phil

The name labels were present in pre-war uniforms, not any more in wartime uniforms (there, one just had the measurements) AFAIK. Only privately purchased items had name labels during the war.

During the war, uniforms and equipment were of course re-used whenever possible. The dead should be buried in their underwear and the rest of the equipment should be collected and sent back for re-use (BTW, the French did this also, there is a famous story and a movie about a pair of bloodstained trousers).

Jan

Edited 27 February , 2023 by AOK4

[healdav]

17 hours ago, phil andrade said:

RichardsProductions99 made a comment a few posts back that really wins my approval.

 

The outstanding feature of the film - in my recollection- is the series of vignettes at the beginning which focus on the recycling of the uniforms recovered from the dead and dying soldiers.

 

This is not a sarcastic statement : far from it.

 

It makes a unique impact, and serves to remind us of the gruesome measures that a famished and deprived society had recourse to as the blockade did its work.

 

As to whether this is true or not, I don’t know.

 

But as a cinematic ploy I reckon it was striking and successful, with its implication about massacre and hardship, and how these combined as the bloody uniforms were being put through the mill, just as millions of men were, too.

 

Phil

In the farce, Pearl Harbour, the fighter pilot soon to be a bomber pilot, arrived in England and was taken to a Spitfire by an RAF officer and told it was his. The Spitfire was full of blood.

The American volunteers were in special American squadrons with no RAF involvement, and he would not have been given a fighter in that state, anyway. Minor details, of course.

[Footsore Private]

I was terribly disappointed with All Quiet on the Western Front (2022 film).  Besides the grotesque historical inaccuracies such as youthful war enthusiasm in 1917, the movie completely removes the anti-war theme.  It completely ignores the remarkably honest feminine roles portrayed in the book.  Where was Paul's visit to Kemmerich's mother?  Where was Paul's mother who saves her precious food supply for him?

I have read this book three times over the last three decades.  

 

[geraint]

Having watched it twice (yawn saddo) I will watch it again (probably in a year or two).

[stillicho]

I was just reading about how well equipped the Germans were for tanks during the 1918 Battle of Cambrai and immediately thought of the reaction to the tank in this film!