All Quiet on the Western Front: Review
A spoiler-filled reflection on the classic anti-war novel's remake
Before Dante Alighieri’s pilgrim crosses the sinister threshold of “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here,” he questions his worthiness to descend and then ascend through the afterlife’s circles — for only heroic figures such as Aeneas and St. Paul were graced to return to the land of the living.
The protagonist in All Quiet on the Western Front — the beautifully and brutally filmed adaptation of the 1929 novel — never asks the question, but embarks on a similar journey into hell, witnessing the indescribable destruction that devastated Europe during the First World War. Unlike his predecessors, the main character — also named Paul — is not heroic. He is a survivalist, more lucky than skilled, and even a petty criminal at times, yet he expresses a futile compassion toward his fellow soldiers. His spiritual descent is excellently portrayed by Felix Kammerer’s subtle, nearly minimalist, performance.
However, Paul is a victim — a young man who like millions of others was enthusiastically, yet blindly motivated to serve the Fatherland. His schoolmates are similarly filled with zeal — enlivened for a chance at heroism — by such rousing speeches from their headmaster. The filmmakers shoot these moments almost satirically, basking these blissfully unaware characters in the warm, spring sun, contrasting with the animalistic, brutality they will all eventually endure.
Unbeknownst to Paul, his outfit was recycled from a German soldier — a despairing creature — who died in No Man’s Land. Paul is a successor to this soldier, perpetuating the canon-fodder lineage to the next recruit. Meanwhile, his agency is akin to the protagonist in Come and See (1985), where he avoids death by sheer luck, while the actions he does initiate are done so for self-preservation rather than for allures of grandeur or the good. He becomes more machine with a soulless demeanor, devoid of any spirit as he marches toward the last battle. Even after a French soldier pierces his heart, Paul manages to live longer than one would expect with such an injury, symbolically reaffirming his heartlessness.
The war also turns Paul into an anxious, contradictory man, who literally confesses to a comrade he is “afraid of the future,” while simultaneously developing post-war plans to become a shoemaker — despite his affluent education (even in this suggestion, Paul’s degraded aspirations are a victim of war). Regardless, this contradictory nature is also exemplified on the battlefield, where Paul repeatedly stabs and suffocates a French soldier only to futilely provide first-aid. Almost every scene guides him to nihilism and despondency, rather than heroism. And how could he not? Throughout the film, he watches countless friends being gunned down, incinerated, or ripped apart by artillery. He watches one of his torn apart schoolmates — fearing to live as a cripple — commit suicide, stabbing himself in the neck with a fork.
Even when Paul fears the future, there are hints of the war to come, further emphasizing the cyclical theme the filmmakers intended — i.e. war breeds war. Unlike recent World War I movies such as 1917 or even They Shall Not Grow Old (two of the best movies in the past five years), the film is almost entirely from the German perspective, providing a fascinating study into the foundations of the Third Reich’s eventual rise.
Throughout most of the film, Paul is caked in mud and blood, as the cinematography — often shaped to resemble a coffin — confines him, more so in times of ceasefire than on the battlefield. In those silent moments, Paul tries to regain and/or retain his humanity, but to no avail. And that is his reason for being fearful — can one peacefully return home and experience life like it had been before? That’s constantly on the characters’ minds and lips, as well as imbued in their actions.
However, as the film demonstrates, there is no return to the land of the living for Paul.
The only peace Paul experiences is his own death. After being pierced through the heart, Paul ascends a few steps into the late morning light witnessing the first moments of the Armistice — and the clean-up of the (**slightly contrived) epic final battle. A new recruit Paul paternalistically, yet coldly ushered to the front finds his calm corpse clutching a French woman’s handkerchief that she bestowed to a now fallen comrade. The recruit only discovers a remarkably clean Paul while removing dog tags, a similar task Paul performs at the beginning of the movie.
Paul’s peace is juxtaposed with the politicians and military personnel negotiating the Armistice, trying to achieve ‘peace.’ Yet, as the movie suggests, the generational damage is already ingrained, as displayed in a young French farm boy who shoots Paul’s comrade. Additionally, Paul’s last moments and death are unbefitting for a traditional hero, yet war does not make heroes, at least among the dead as Daniel Brühl’s Matthias Erzberger — head of the German Armistice delegation — states for they cannot experience their country’s adulation. (While certainly not detracting from the film’s theme, the Armistice signing scenes could have been eliminated — but the filmmakers wished to amplify the suspense of the protagonist’s survival and thousands like him.)
What All Quiet on the Western Front says is not necessarily new, but it successfully and artistically reflects that war is a cyclical, circular descent into hell. And what is hell, but the complete abandonment of love, the human spirit and God.
However, unlike Paul’s spiritual predecessors, if war is not cast aside, then there is no escape, no ascension. Only a condemnation for millions of souls doomed to repeat Paul’s descension for all time.
Appendix
*The cinematography should be nominated for an Academy Award. If not, then I don’t know what constitutes as a well shot film anymore
**More than 2,000 soldiers died on the western front on Nov. 11, 1918, including a Knights of Columbus’ member who is the last known U.S. casualty. However, I say the last battle is slightly contrived because, to my knowledge, there was no large scale attack as portrayed. This epic battle is also not aligned with the novel’s more subdued ending.