ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT
Cert
15 ★★★★
A Hollywood version swept the Oscars in 1930 and now Germans have finally decided to tackle Erich Maria Remarque’s classic First World War novel.
And perhaps this harrowing film couldn’t have arrived at a better time.
Director Edward Berger says he was inspired by Brexit and Trump to make a movie that warns of the dangers of unthinking nationalism. But events in Ukraine resonate the most in this spectacular film about young lives sacrificed to boost the vanity of the old men.
The film, which should win the modern equivalent of the Best Foreign Language Oscar, starts with a young German soldier almost surviving a deadly charge into No Man’s Land.
Then it follows his blood-stained uniform to a laundry and back to Germany where it’s passed to an enthusiastic new recruit Paul (an excellent Felix Kammerer).
The 17-year-old, who forges his father’s signature, is quickly packed off to northern France where he discovers the war isn’t going quite so heroically as he has been led to believe.
The grim battle scenes are less showy than those in Sam Mendes’s 1917, but are even more devastating. A sequence featuring allied tanks and flamethrowers could burn itself into your memory. When we get
to November 1918, the action is intercut with scenes of German politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Bruhl) nervously preparing for armistice negotiations with the French.
Erzberger is desperate to stop the slaughter, but his bitter counterparts are more interested in revenge than a lasting peace. We all know what happens next.