The teenage volunteer soldier is bursting with excitement and pride, keen to fight for the glory and greatness and superiority of his homeland. When he’s handed his uniform, he’s as excited as a ballplayer getting called up to the big leagues — but he pauses when he sees another man’s name sewn inside the collar.
“Excuse me,” he says to the officer handing out uniforms. “It already belongs to someone.”
“Ah yes,” comes the reply. “It was probably too small for the fellow. Happens all the time.”
The officer rips off the tag and hands the uniform back to the young soldier, saying. “Here. It’s yours.” As the young man walks away, the camera pans down to the floor under the table, and we see dozens of discarded name tags. Indeed, the uniform did belong to someone else — someone who is dead. As we already know from the prologue, when soldiers in this war have been killed in action, civilian women wash and repair the uniforms, and they’re recycled — just like the steady but dwindling supply of young men who have been marched off to fight in a brutal, bloody, horrific and losing war.
Time and again in director and co-writer Edward Berger’s brilliant and bruising and epic adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s famous anti-war novel “All Quiet on the Western Front,” the theme of the disposable, willing but naive and often doomed young warrior is brought home in stark and unforgiving fashion, as in the above scene, or when a soldier who is new to the front is given a small bag after a deadly battle and told to fill it with the dog tags of his fallen comrades, so their families can be informed they’re gone.
This is the third adaptation of Remarque’s World War I novel, following the 1930 Lewis Milestone classic that won the Academy Award for best picture and drew the wrath of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (with the film being outlawed in Germany for the better parts of two decades because it was deemed anti-Germany and so effectively portrayed the human cost of war), and an impressively mounted and well-acted 1979 television film starring Richard Thomas.
Making great use of 21st century technology, this latest version is the most visually sweeping and impressive version yet, and it comes close to matching the original for its visceral, gut-punch effect. Like so many of the greatest war films, from “Paths of Glory” to “Platoon” to “Saving Private Ryan” to “1917,” this is a difficult and at times heart-wrenching viewing experience, but it’s also a technical marvel, a carefully considered character study and, yes, a timely reminder that the young people who fight and sacrifice and kill and die in wars are pawns in a complex and often maddeningly unnecessary larger chess game.
To be sure, “All Quiet on the Western Front” traffics in any number of war movie clichés, e.g., the first soldier to panic and make a break for it is almost certain to get killed, and the upbeat guy with the glasses will be found dead in a trench, his broken and bent glasses by his side, and the wounded buddy who asks his friend how bad those injuries are will instantly realize he’s a goner. Still, those clichés exist because they’re often reflective of the larger truths about war.
With principal photography taking place in the Czech Republic and director Berger and cinematographer James Friend filling the screen with slightly saturated color tones that convey an air of urgency but also a feeling of the world of a century ago, “All Quiet on the Western Front” puts you in the mud-covered, rain-soaked, blood-spattered boots and uniforms of the young German soldiers fighting the French on a 400-mile stretch of land snaking through France and Belgium — the decisive theater in World War I, with millions dying as the front remained relatively static throughout the war.
The story is told primarily through the experiences of young Paul Bäumer (film newcomer Felix Kammerer in a powerfully effective and empathetic performance), a 17-year-old infantryman who forges a parental permission slip so he can join the fight for “the Kaiser, God and the Fatherland,” as a superior officer puts it. Paul and his buddies sincerely believe they’ll be marching victoriously through Paris within a matter of weeks — but as soon as they’re plunged into the battle, they realize it’s all about survival from day to day. Heroics are made of desperation; the best one can hope for is to keep one’s head down, follow orders and dream of one day returning home, to the simple but miraculous comforts of a warm bed, a decent meal, and someone to love.
Even as Paul and his mates alternate between quiet moments of reflection and sudden and deadly outbursts of battle, Germany’s political and military hierarchy already knows the war has been lost. The always compelling Daniel Brühl is magnificent as Matthias Erzberger, a real-life German politician who worked tirelessly to secure a cease-fire as quickly as possible in order to spare more lives, while the equally impressive Devid Striesow makes for a unconscionable villain in General Friedrich, who orders a sure-to-be-catastrophic offensive in literally the last hours of the war.
For Friedrich, it’s all about national pride and going out in a blaze of glory. Easy for him to say, as he’s nowhere near the Western Front.
