I really liked All Quiet On The Western Front, but it does have one massive, glaring problem: the title. The film is a grandiose, anti-war epic about the horrors of life in the trenches and it's terrific, but it's also got a lot of literary weight on its shoulders and doesn't adequately channel the spirit of the source material. It would be less problematic if it wasn't trying to pass itself off as an adaptation of a landmark novel, especially when you consider the ending. It's a great movie, but it's not a great All Quiet On The Western Front movie. The two previous adaptations (from 1930 and 1979) are more faithful interpretations.
The film focuses on a group of impressionable German teenagers and begins in 1917. Seduced by propagandistic stories of adventure and heroism, they sign up for the German army and are sent to fight the French. Their boyhood idealism is shattered almost immediately as they come face to face with the true horror of war. They spend their first night in the trenches huddled in a dugout, shaking with fear as artillery smashes the landscape and deafens them. By the time the sun rises, they've been changed forever.
The film then flashes forward to the closing days of the war. Our teenage heroes are now battle-scarred veterans, whose dreams of heroism have been dashed for the sake of just surviving one more day. At the same time, a leading German official meets with the French for peace talks. The protagonists don't realise it, but the guns might soon fall silent and they could even go home. Providing they live through the next few days.
If you're familiar with Erich Maria Remarque's book, you'll notice this synopsis is slightly different from the original. Like the novel, the film focuses on the erosion of humanity and the horrifying mundanity of everyday life in the trenches, but it tells it differently. The sudden jump in the narrative that misses out on the vast chunk of their frontline experience is jarring and multiple characters are noticeably absent. The brutal combat training is gone, and so is the mind-numbing repetition of identical boring days in muddy trenches and the dehumanisation of the military-industrial complex. Instead, the film is a simple story of base survival against the odds.
For the most part, this isn't a problem as the themes are relatively similar. This a louder, more battle-heavy interpretation but you certainly won't come away thinking that war is anything but a tragedy. What happens to these lads is indescribably awful and in that respect, it matches the book's original idea.
However, the decision to fundamentally alter the climax was a huge mistake. The film ends with a spectacular, all-action finale. A pompous General sends his men into the teeth of the guns for one last ditch attempt at glory and it ends horrifically. But it also misses the point. The original ending is far less melodramatic and significantly more effective, demonstrating the inherent disregard for individual lives that comes with war. The movie doesn't get this. There's nothing quiet about this western front.
Which is a shame because if the characters had different names and the film was called something else, it would be undeniably great. The battle scenes are enthralling and the acting is terrific from start to finish. Seeing the fate of a young soldier who the lead character inherits his uniform from is a genius idea, and you get a genuine sense of the sheer absurdity of the first world war.
It's brutally harrowing and well worth spending over two hours with, but don't go in expecting a faithful adaptation of All Quiet On The Western Front. The ending is hugely misguided though and deviates so drastically from the spirit of the novel that it's hard to get past. It's a great film, but it would have been better if it just ended quietly rather than in a bombastic display of blood and pyrotechnics.
The film focuses on a group of impressionable German teenagers and begins in 1917. Seduced by propagandistic stories of adventure and heroism, they sign up for the German army and are sent to fight the French. Their boyhood idealism is shattered almost immediately as they come face to face with the true horror of war. They spend their first night in the trenches huddled in a dugout, shaking with fear as artillery smashes the landscape and deafens them. By the time the sun rises, they've been changed forever.
The film then flashes forward to the closing days of the war. Our teenage heroes are now battle-scarred veterans, whose dreams of heroism have been dashed for the sake of just surviving one more day. At the same time, a leading German official meets with the French for peace talks. The protagonists don't realise it, but the guns might soon fall silent and they could even go home. Providing they live through the next few days.
If you're familiar with Erich Maria Remarque's book, you'll notice this synopsis is slightly different from the original. Like the novel, the film focuses on the erosion of humanity and the horrifying mundanity of everyday life in the trenches, but it tells it differently. The sudden jump in the narrative that misses out on the vast chunk of their frontline experience is jarring and multiple characters are noticeably absent. The brutal combat training is gone, and so is the mind-numbing repetition of identical boring days in muddy trenches and the dehumanisation of the military-industrial complex. Instead, the film is a simple story of base survival against the odds.
For the most part, this isn't a problem as the themes are relatively similar. This a louder, more battle-heavy interpretation but you certainly won't come away thinking that war is anything but a tragedy. What happens to these lads is indescribably awful and in that respect, it matches the book's original idea.
However, the decision to fundamentally alter the climax was a huge mistake. The film ends with a spectacular, all-action finale. A pompous General sends his men into the teeth of the guns for one last ditch attempt at glory and it ends horrifically. But it also misses the point. The original ending is far less melodramatic and significantly more effective, demonstrating the inherent disregard for individual lives that comes with war. The movie doesn't get this. There's nothing quiet about this western front.
Which is a shame because if the characters had different names and the film was called something else, it would be undeniably great. The battle scenes are enthralling and the acting is terrific from start to finish. Seeing the fate of a young soldier who the lead character inherits his uniform from is a genius idea, and you get a genuine sense of the sheer absurdity of the first world war.
It's brutally harrowing and well worth spending over two hours with, but don't go in expecting a faithful adaptation of All Quiet On The Western Front. The ending is hugely misguided though and deviates so drastically from the spirit of the novel that it's hard to get past. It's a great film, but it would have been better if it just ended quietly rather than in a bombastic display of blood and pyrotechnics.