All Quiet On the Western Front (2022) **1/2

 

Comedian Marc Maron has a new comedy special called “From Bleak to Dark.” In it, he talks honestly about some heavy stuff, including the death of his girlfriend and his deep pessimism about the state of the world. You might not believe it, but Maron manages to make this stuff funny. One thing he does not talk about is the 2022, German-language adaptation of “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Maron didn't want to go THAT bleak and THAT dark.

Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel was a chilling commentary on the inhumanity and futility of WWI. The book was banned and burned under the Nazis, who wanted to re-glorify war and sacrifice-for-country. Nowadays, it is required reading in German schools. The story has already been adapted to screen a couple of times. The 1930 version won 2 Academy Awards, and there was a television version in 1979. This latest adaptation, from writer/director Edward Berger, is in German, and it has garnered its share of awards and nominations.

The story follows German youth Paul Baumer. With his friends from high school, Paul volunteers for the army during WWI. The boys are eager to prove their mettle, but the ugliness of the war quickly dispels their youthful illusions, as they are exposed to artillery, poison gas, and machine gun fire. They quickly learn that war is simply a very efficient machine for turning young men into corpses. As the meat grinder carries on its grim business, Paul struggles, not to cover himself in glory, but simply to survive. Meanwhile, in a story line not included in the novel, German officials meet with the French to negotiate an armistice, while an obsessed German general tries to pack in as much extra bloodshed as possible before peace is declared.

On its technical merits, “All Quiet On the Western Front” is outstanding. The German cast do a great job, and the cinematographer expertly blends shots of the French countryside with grim, gray battlefield imagery. The battle scenes are as gut-wrenching as those in “Saving Private Ryan.” As epic as those scenes are, it is the personal moments that really stick with you, like the scene where Paul reads a letter from home for his illiterate friend, or one where Paul apologizes to an Allied soldier he has just killed.

As well-made as the movie is, it is no fun to watch, and one has to ask if anyone today really needs to suffer through this 2 ½ hour treatise on the horrors of war. In its time, the story was a classic, and if more people had read it and taken it to heart, maybe we wouldn't have had WWII. Today, the need for an anti-war viewpoint is no less pressing, but we have moved on to different types of warfare and different types of horrors. Our age has its own cautionary tales about war, from “Apocalypse Now” to "Black Hawk Down." It is possible that “All Quiet on the Western Front” still has something to teach us, but the 2022 version, at least, takes 2 ½ long, dark, bleak hours to do it.

2 ½ stars out of 5