A Film Review of All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

 


"The stench will remain on us forever."


    All Quiet on the Western Front is a film that has stuck with me days after first watching it. Just like the 1929 novel that it is based on, the film follows the young solider Paul Bäumer as he and his friends eagerly enlist in the German Army during World War 1. The horrors that greet them on the front lines make the boys quickly regret their life choices. 


    Aside from being very intense through most of its run time, the craft on display is nothing short of amazing. The battle sequences here are the embodiment of controlled chaos. The cinematography holds nothing back from the audience, putting much of the violence and gore at the forefront of the frame. Just like the soldiers, the audience is forced to stare directly at the darkness with each gun shot and grenade explosion. The production design is amazingly dirty, staining everything on screen until the camera itself starts to bleed. It is in these scenes where the movie is at its most horrific, however I cannot understate how consistently great the hair/makeup, costume design, and production design is all throughout. 


    Playing Paul is a first time screen actor named Felix Kammerer. Although he has experience on stage, his work in this film is truly extraordinary. Aside from having to showcase every single kind of emotion that a human being can convey, he also has such a physically demanding role as well. While laughing, dancing, running, screaming, crying, and fighting; he carries the emotional weight of the whole story. This feat is made all the more impressive after seeing the amount of dirty water and mud that constantly covers the character's body and heavy clothing. The rest of the ensemble also manages to put on great performances while also being constantly covered in blood or mud or both. 


    The director of the film, Edward Berger, and his team, have created a truly brutal piece of art with this film. It is clear that this material means so much to the German director, because the attention to detail exudes out of every moment. My only gripes are with certain story and screenwriting choices towards the end of the film, but I won't include any specifics here. This is a film that should be experienced in full, but beware and abandon all hope, ye who enter these trenches. No one ever leaves the same way they arrived.


All Quiet on the Western Front: 4/5, 8/10, B+

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