All Quiet on the Western Front is anti-war, but it also knows that peace can’t be maintained forever.
The novel All Quiet on the Western Front was written from what seemed at the time to be a historical perspective. It came 10 years after World War I, where it’s primarily set, and was written by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of the conflict. Coming out in 1928, though, the novel’s story of a German soldier who dies in the last days of the fighting was missing one important addendum: the war that was still to come.
The original movie adaptation had the same problem, even though it won Best Picture in 1930, at one of the first Academy Awards. The new German version of the film, though, which just recently hit Netflix, is able to more fully contextualize the First World War from a broader historical viewpoint. In doing so, it also somewhat complicates the message of the original novel without fully undermining it.
Note: this review contains plot spoilers for All Quiet on the Western Front.
At its core, every version of All Quiet in the Western Front is about the moment when idealism meets reality. It follows Paul Bäumer, a young German soldier who believes in the cause he’s fighting for and wants to prove that he can contribute to the efforts of his nation. The second he hits the Western Front, though, he discovers that this war is brutal, violent, dirty, and pointless. He loses friends, any shred of hope he once had, and eventually his own life.
The new adaptation keeps most of these core ideas in place but condenses Paul’s story somewhat so that most of it takes place in the final days of the war. In doing so, it introduces a secondary plot, one focused on the negotiations, or lack thereof, as Germany prepared to surrender. The way this film tells it, that surrender was a humiliation even at the moment. Any student of history knows too that the humiliation only got worse as Germany descended into poverty and chaos in the aftermath of the war’s end.
