This is a brief review of the 2022 movie “All Quiet in the Western Front,” which is based on the 1929 novel by German author and WW1 veteran Erich Maria Remarque. WARNING: Spoilers ahead.
This is the third movie based off the book, following on the original 1930 version and then another version released in 1979. The book is a well-known piece of literature, often on the must-read list for high school and college students. The plot, inspired by the author’s experiences as a World War One German Imperial Army veteran, as well as other veteran accounts, contains strong anti-war themes. The protagonist German soldier, Paul Bäumer, witnesses the horrors of the war alongside a steadily diminishing band of comrades, succumbing himself at the end of the novel. When the Nazis rose to power, the book and 1930 movie were banned in Germany as “unpatriotic,” and the author eventually left the country.
Since the plot is so well known, I won’t reprise it fully here. Nor is this intended to be a comparison with the other two movie versions, although I will always hold the 1930 original in high esteem.
At the outset, I’d like to say I enjoyed the 2022 movie version. Many scenes were visually stunning. The pacing was decent for a movie almost two and a half hours long, and I never felt like my attention was wandering. The actors delivered solid performances, especially the wonderful Daniel Brühl as the German politician (although I kept waiting for him to break into the Baron Zemo dance).
However, there were several deviations in this version from the book, and the prior movies, that I found to be questionable choices. The first one likely falls into the nit-picky category. I found the second and third choices more troubling. The fourth may also be somewhat nit-picky. Your mileage may vary.
Issue One — French Farm of Death. I found the “raiding the French farmhouse for food” sub-plot off-putting. In the 2022 movie, the German protagonist and his comrade, Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky steal a goose from a French farmer. In the first instance, the farmer comes out with a gun and fires several shots, but misses. The second time they attempt a similar theft, it leads to a scene where the young son of the French farmer kills Katczinsky. In the original book, Katczinsky is killed by an artillery barrage. The whole French farm set-up bothered me not only because it seemed (to me) to work better to have “Kat” fall victim to the soulless fate of an artillery barrage (randomness that was devouring everyone else), but also because this “dangerous French farm” should not exist in this setting.
In WW1, on the Western Front, the Germans imposed an iron military control on the areas of Belgium and France they occupied. There were historic reasons for this. In the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, the Germans (not yet an empire) experienced widespread partisan warfare, which they reacted to with atrocities. The German were determined not to endure a recurrence in WW1 and reacted even more harshly to even imagined civilian resistance as soon as they crossed the borders in 1914. There is no way a French farmer has a gun near and behind the front by this stage of the war (1917-1918) much less gets away with shooting at German soldiers (even looting ones). Maybe some incidents like this occurred, but it just seemed like a bad plot deviation. The original death showed the randomness of war. Not sure what the French farm sequence was intended to show. It just seemed like an unneeded contrivance. Maybe someone wanted a French child actor to get a career jump.
Issue Two — The Stab In The Back: This one was more troubling to me. One of the myths used by the Nazis during their rise to power in 1930’s Germany was the “stab in the back” myth. This alleged that Germany lost WW1 not due to military defeat, but due to betrayal by German politicians of the left, with especial scapegoating of “the Jews.” In the 2022 movie, while there is an early reference to the heavy losses being endured by the German Imperial Army, there are repeated references by a character portraying a senior German general to the “betrayal” of Germany by the “Social Democrats.” The movie carefully avoids repeating the Nazi calumnies against Jews, but still.
In reality, it was the Imperial German Army leaders (right up to Hindenburg) that were pressing for an armistice. The German military joined in pressing the Kaiser to abdicate. The reason was that the German military, under relentless assault by Allied troops, were reeling across the entire front. Soldier mutinies were erupting, as well as riots and unrest that were spreading across the German homeland. The war had to be ended before catastrophe, but the German civilian leaders were the ones sent to make the armistice. They proved convenient fall guys later on. The German military could claim (untruthfully) that the German Army was never militarily defeated. The Nazis would use the myth to mobilize sentiments against the post-war governments, against the Jews and also to recruit German war veterans (who liked the Nazi alternative version of history since it helped soothe their shame of losing).
I won’t go so far as to allege the 2022 movie intends to replicate the “stab in the back” myth. But as I watched it, it occurred to me that anyone who wasn’t a student of history for that period, but just saw the 2022 movie, would easily come away with the idea that the myth had a basis. They could have fixed some of this by showing more of the real-life discontent of the German Imperial Army by the latter stages of the war and connected the dots to the military defeats.
Issue Three — Final Suicide Charge: This may be a quibble, maybe not, but it ties into Issue Two, above. In the book, Paul is killed in October, a month before the November 11, 1918, end of the war. He is slain by a sniper, in a similar “war is random” type of incident like those that claim his comrades. In the movie, we instead have Paul, along with a mass of other German soldiers, ordered to engage in a last-ditch suicidal charge across No-Man’s Land. And I do mean last-ditch — the charge kicks off fifteen minutes before scheduled 11 am cease-fire.
In the real war, there were attacks up to the last minute of the armistice, but they were by the advancing, victorious, Allies, and they also caused a lot of controversy, at the time and later. I am sorry, there is NO WAY that German soldiers, with fifteen minutes to go, are going to obey a maniacal order like that. Especially not semi-mutinous German soldiers whose discipline was already evaporating. This scene was almost ludicrous in its unbelievability. It also reinforces the Issue Two I have, which is portraying the German soldiers as raring to go right up until the very end. See, these guys WERE ready to keep fighting! They were STABBED IN THE BACK!
Issue Four: In the book, and this is portrayed especially well in the 1930 movie, there is a poignant scene where Paul shows regret to a French soldier that he has just killed in brutal hand to hand combat, speaking to the dying man as he lays alongside him. In the original, Paul’s speech is laced with some pretty heavy pacifist and even leftist sentiments, as he tells the dying French soldier that, if things were different, they might have been brothers. In the 2022 movie, this speech is largely absent, and the viewer is left to intuit, from family pictures Paul finds on the dying Frenchman, this kinship and regret. It struck me as a strange narrative choice, since this is one of the most powerful scenes in the 1930 movie (and I suspect, one of the scenes that most triggered the Nazis — the brotherhood of mankind was a “Communist” theme to them).
Summary
As noted above, while I enjoyed the movie, it left me with nagging unease about the way they portrayed some of the history. I welcome other thoughts.