All Quiet on the Western Front

In the trailer, the All Quite on the Western Front teases us with visual exhibitionism, and you can't help but expect a proper war spectacle. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. For the entire 150 minutes or so, the filmmakers draw primarily on the formal identity of Saving Private Ryan, but miss the best moments entirely. Anyone who has seen Spielberg's opus remembers the names of the main characters: good guy Captain Miller, tough guy Captain Caparza, Ryan of course, not to mention iconic scenes like Normandy or the battle in the city; plus, with a hard-to-beat level of shocking authenticity and Kaminski's mastery of cinematography. Here, 10 minutes after the screening, you don't remember a single name and perhaps only one memorable scene – the one with the general in the puddle. Iconic, innovative and precisely crafted cult-classic vs. generic German filmmakers' wartime turmoil that is more akin to Hacksaw Ridge or We Were Soldiers. I deliberately mention Gibson’s films, because the level and depiction of violence is quite similar here. It might grab you by the balls for a second, but you’ll easily forget about it in a couple of minutes. It's still a solid film for Germans standards, with some spectacular and polished visuals in places, but it's not going to become a classic by any stretch of the imagination. For that, the story is blandly executed, the actors are lackluster and the action is too monotonous. (12/11/2022)

An adaptation that isn't afraid to mess with the very foundations of what is rightly a timeless classic and yet it is the most faithful adaptation possible. An established benchmark of how to adapt the written word into film language (not telling and showing), preserving the message and yet "standing up and not being a mere illustration". Everything is subordinated to the suggestive concept of "you are there with them". The absurdity and futility of the war machine through everyday trench existential horror, which, however, in addition to the horrific scenes (through a war scene, through the simple survival without hope for the future), manages to contrast the humanity and unexpected permeations of normality in spite of everything (officers, timelessness, humanity), often without words; purely by sight, sound, suggestion, music. Yes, you could say that it doesn't build up, it just kind of flows during the last days on the front. That’s not very viewer friendly, but it’s the intention, and it works, without being the same over and over again. It cannot be denied that many of the horrors have already been handled equally impressively by other works (but it is hard to accuse the adaptation of the classic on which everyone is based of being "a bit dated"). This is a film that will inevitably divide, some will berate it because "they messed with my beloved book", others because "we've seen this before and we don't need to do it again", others will bemoan "the non-existent pace". And then there'll be those who won't sleep easy as a result, not because of the explicit depictions of wartime atrocities or the topicality "it was a century ago", but for the overall sense of the confusion of it all, even though it makes do with little; perhaps the mere pilgrimage of a uniform from the front. (29/10/2022)

I haven’t read the novel, so I’m reviewing this strictly as a war movie. In technical terms, it’s fine. There is nothing to criticise when it comes to the sets, costumes, camerawork or the depiction of the battle and negotiation scenes. However, the detailed portrayal of the characters and, mainly, the dialogue come up short, feeling flat and failing to emotionally engage the viewer. The film lacks a strong screenwriting focus on the personal stories of the protagonist and several other characters. (13/11/2022)

Yesterday, I saw the 1979 American rendition of this movie, and while it had its flaws, the creators stayed true to the book, albeit loosely at times. On the flip side, despite the correct title and character names, the new German version diverged significantly from Remarque's book. Unlike the American version, the German one painted a more realistic picture of the war—the trenches looked right, and it effectively portrayed the impersonal war machinery where soldiers were treated as mere expendables. However, the creators took the de-personalization to an extreme, resulting in flat characters (except for Paul and Katczinsky), making it difficult for me to connect with any of them. Even when they made an effort to make the battles realistic, there were lapses, like extras wandering around destroyed trenches after artillery bombardments. Fortunately, the French machine gunners were apparently on a smoke break. Putting the book aside (which is a challenge for me), it was a decently crafted film depicting the senselessness of warfare, showing the ludicrous pursuit of a two-hundred-meter strip of land, resembling the moon's surface, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. / Lesson learned: Running towards machine guns is not a healthy sport. (02/01/2023)

The repetitive alternation of the heat of battle and the coldness of waiting, the recurring motifs for unimaginative half-wits, the book’s premise stripped of all its compelling scenes, which the film replaces with simple (and sometimes unrealistic) war porn and a completely hollow political storyline. The film fails to approximate Remarque’s insistent humanism except by literally illustrating the conflict of minor and major history, which doesn’t make a lot of sense (the horrors of the First World War didn’t actually consist in the fact that Foch wanted an armistice in six days and the Germans needed to think it over). As an adaptation, this is a disaster, devoid of psychology and with no thoroughly developed characters, and as a film it’s drawn out, transparent and superficial. The versions from 1930 and 1979 had something to them, but this fails even as a stand-alone work. Netflix’s problem isn’t the lack of casting actors of color. Its problem is that its projects lack dramaturgy and thus don’t much sense. (01/11/2022)