All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

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Persona
Joined: Wed Mar 07, 2018 1:16 pm

All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

#1 Post by Persona » Sat Dec 03, 2022 12:13 pm

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

I rarely go for war movies but I was kind of blown away by this. Great filmmaking, not just in the visceral and technical aspects but also the storytelling, character details, and thematic expression. Puts something like 1917 to shame on those levels.

It was about time the book got a German language adaptation, glad it was a good one.

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Apperson
Joined: Mon Dec 05, 2016 3:47 pm
Location: Oxfordshire, UK

Re: The Films of 2022

#2 Post by Apperson » Sun Jan 22, 2023 3:45 pm

It's unfortunate that I feel the need to vent about All Quiet on the Western Front because in many respects it's a very well made film that is maybe a bit derivative in some aspects (the score is quite striking but reminds me a lot of the late Jóhann Jóhannson) but nevertheless succesfully updates the WW1 battlefield to modern sensibilities without sacrificing the horror, from the pre-title sequence to the recruitment and the first battle I thought it was excellent stuff.

And then it cuts to Daniel Brühl...
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It is now the 7th November 1918, 4 days before the end of the war and I realise in what it adds and updates that the film doesn't trust the audience with its themes at all.

What was once a lyrical slow march to despair becomes packed with coincidence, most of the supporting cast get lost in adaptation to focus on Paul and Kat, who of course were the final most important relationship in the 1930 film from my by process of elimination, here they're the main relationship from the start of the 2nd act. All the added scenes with the peace negotiations and General Foch are so much more two-dimensional that the rest of the material.

The last battle really compounds it, what was once a quiet tragedy a month before Armistice a desperate battle that's 15 minutes from the end of the war that I knew in my heart of hearts was going to kill Paul seconds before the war ends and I was not wrong.
It's also weirdly unconcerned with the homeland attitude to the war for the most part, with the exclusion of Paul's return to the classroom to give the true experience of the war before being ridiculed and shamed by the students and schoolmastes.

There is really good visual symbolism here as well as some which is not so good (it cuts from the squalor of the front to a fancy generals dinner table 2 or 3 time in case you didn't get it), the pacing was good throughout, and there is some adaptation needed to show the mindset and inception of a resentful Germany. But those overwrought choices in updating the story really killed my investment, and it's really annoying that I only watched it this weekend before the Oscar nominations as I would've felt the exact same way months ago instead of looking like a hater now for secondary reasons.

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Toland's Mitchell
Joined: Sun Nov 10, 2019 2:42 pm

Re: The Films of 2022

#3 Post by Toland's Mitchell » Mon Jan 23, 2023 5:49 am

I agree with Apperson's unenthusiastic response to All Quiet on the Western Front. The film's major differences from the classic novel in terms of narrative and structure, do nothing to deepen our engagement with the main character. It actually backfires. The novel, as well as its 30s and 70s adaptations, was a simple story about a German teenager named Paul, who bought into the lies and propaganda about the glory of war, and passionately enlisted in the army...only to find his expectations shattered by the realities of trench warfare. Over the course of years on the front, he watched his friends die one-by-one, as his mind was gradually broken down to the point that he lost his will to live. The novel and the other film versions also did an excellent job examining the German home front, by showing us Paul's return to his village while on military leave, where nobody believed his truthful accounts of life in the trenches, and they ridiculed him and branded him as a coward. There was also tender subplot about Paul's dying mother. However, in this new adaptation, director Edward Berger omits all of that, and instead gives us a whole new story-line about the German High Command, which takes up about 30-40% of the movie. This is not to say filmmakers must stay true to the novels they're based on, and of course they're allowed to add entire plot-lines. It just doesn't pay off in AQotWF. Paul's story is the much stronger of the two. But unfortunately, the time we spend with Paul is relatively short, in two different ways. For one, we have the other plot-line in addition to his. Secondly, as Apperson mentioned, the movie skips to Nov 7, 1918 early on in the film. This tells us the remainder of the film is constricted into 4 days, as we know from history class the war ended on the 11th. Thus, we never get the sense of camaraderie between Paul and his fellow troops. We don't get the sense of his suffering. The film asks us to take these elements for granted without actually exploring them. And as I mentioned, the film could have benefited by including those scenes when he re-visits his village. On the plus side, we do get the sense of the visceral combat thanks to modern-day special effects, and excellent cinematography and editing. The scene where Paul's trench was attacked by a French tank division was incredibly powerful. There were a couple other powerful scenes peppered in wherever it was convenient, such as the knife scene. However, any time Paul's story seemed to be building momentum, the film cut away to the other plot of the film. This revolved around two Germans, a politician and a high-ranking general, who have to negotiate a cease-fire with the Allies. It served educational purposes, I guess. It accurately showed us their lives of luxury juxtaposed to Paul's life of hell. It demonstrated the lunacy of WWI generals. But it didn't add anything compelling to the film in and of itself. Instead, it felt like unnecessarily long bridge connecting their story to Paul's at the very end
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when the German general ordered an attack against the French 15 minutes before the cease-fire went into effect, that ultimately killed our main character. It's tragic, yes, for we had just seen Paul celebrating the imminent end of the war and finally getting to go home. However, it's nowhere near as powerful as Paul's death in the novel and the earlier film adaptations. In those, Paul had gone home for a brief visit, and all he wanted was go back to the trenches, because he could no longer relate to anything else. And he died, not in some last-ditch battle to fuel some crazy general's sense of national pride as he did in this film, but instead by simply losing his will to live and (deliberately?) leaving himself vulnerable to an enemy sniper.

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yoloswegmaster
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:57 pm

Re: All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

#4 Post by yoloswegmaster » Fri Feb 03, 2023 10:51 am

A listing for a 4K release in the U.S. has been found and it will be coming from... MPI. I guess there's another label that has now signed a deal with Netflix?

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

#5 Post by dwk » Fri Feb 03, 2023 12:48 pm

It wasn't produced by Netflix, so it is possible that the home video rights were sold separately.

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dwk
Joined: Sat Jun 12, 2010 6:10 pm

Re: All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

#6 Post by dwk » Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:47 am

The listings for the MPI release have been deleted from some sites, like Import CDs, and Amazon has it listed as unavailable. I wonder if MPI was trying to distribute the German release in the US and Netflix stopped them.

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yoloswegmaster
Joined: Tue Nov 01, 2016 3:57 pm

Re: All Quiet on the Western Front (Edward Berger, 2022)

#7 Post by yoloswegmaster » Sat Feb 25, 2023 9:05 am

The listing for the MPI release has shown up on Bull Moose, and a U.K release is coming from Altitude in April.

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