The word that springs to mind after watching the new Netflix adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s landmark World War One novel, is: gritty.
This word could then be followed closely by several others; for example: harrowing, bloody, and relentlessly, oppressively horrible.
These words seem to be a good indication of the direction one might strive for when embarking on an adaptation of the novel in question, and though it might have been fun to see a version of All Quiet On The Western Front made by someone who was trying to make it (for example) offbeat, kooky, or hilariously upbeat, this version is certainly not that.
In fact, you might go so far as to say it corners the market in scenes of desperately realistic, claustrophobically oppressive, or just plain gruesomely, upsettingly horrible violence. The depictions of the wholesale slaughter characteristic of trench warfare are utterly chilling. There are a number of extended tracking scenes which are both nail-bitingly tense, and incredibly difficult to watch, while at the same time (a neat trick) being profoundly compelling, and all but impossible to turn away from.
Which is not to say that all this film aspires to is gore and horror. If that were the case, this would be nothing but a trifling distraction, another superficial manifestation of our current ability to (given a suitable budget) depict just about anything to which a director and a special effects department can turn their imagination.
There’s a lot more to this film than blood and guts, however, even if the blood and guts are on a scale that suggests the project was green-lit in a meeting where executives gushingly proposed envisioning the battlefields of World War One in a level of post-Game Of Thrones full-scale bloodshed not previously depicted, on small screen or on large.
The gruelling, graphic tracking scenes of trench warfare are interspersed with intimate conversations between the school children-cum-soldiers; we follow a group of fresh faced new recruits as they are inflated by pompous speeches from elders who should (and do) know better, blown like doomed leaves into the mud and blood and disease of the trenches. We see them buckle and break under the strain of their new reality…the ones that survive, anyway.
Meanwhile, we get a glimpse of the German high command: an embattled General, feeling betrayed by attempts to broker the Armistice, and the deputation sent to arrange that Armistice. The acting here is really first class, both by those on the battlefield, by the lonely, defeated General battling his demons, and the battle of the deputation to secure the longed-for peace.
I knew only one of the actors: Daniel Bruhel, who I recognised mainly because he played a villain in the Marvel movies. For a brief moment, I wondered if Disney had shelled up some of the cash for the adaptation, and were about to fold All Quiet On The Western Front into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That could have been fun. Captain America could have been involved. Spider-Man could have silenced the monstrous howling of the guns with a few well-slung webs. Doctor Strange could have manipulated time, dragging the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month forward and saving the life of our doomed hero. That would have worked nicely; after all, Benedict Cumberbatch fought in this war in both Warhorse and 1917, so he wouldn’t have looked that out of place making eldritch gestures and summoning glittering portals.
It would have been nice.
Anyway.
The film is timely, of course, not just to remind us about the horrors so recently endured by our own ancestors (and how paltry our own troubles are but comparison) but also because of recent world events. How far removed are those German school children from those tens of thousands called up across Russia?
Maybe the world hasn’t changed that much in the last hundred years, after all.
This word could then be followed closely by several others; for example: harrowing, bloody, and relentlessly, oppressively horrible.
These words seem to be a good indication of the direction one might strive for when embarking on an adaptation of the novel in question, and though it might have been fun to see a version of All Quiet On The Western Front made by someone who was trying to make it (for example) offbeat, kooky, or hilariously upbeat, this version is certainly not that.
In fact, you might go so far as to say it corners the market in scenes of desperately realistic, claustrophobically oppressive, or just plain gruesomely, upsettingly horrible violence. The depictions of the wholesale slaughter characteristic of trench warfare are utterly chilling. There are a number of extended tracking scenes which are both nail-bitingly tense, and incredibly difficult to watch, while at the same time (a neat trick) being profoundly compelling, and all but impossible to turn away from.
Which is not to say that all this film aspires to is gore and horror. If that were the case, this would be nothing but a trifling distraction, another superficial manifestation of our current ability to (given a suitable budget) depict just about anything to which a director and a special effects department can turn their imagination.
There’s a lot more to this film than blood and guts, however, even if the blood and guts are on a scale that suggests the project was green-lit in a meeting where executives gushingly proposed envisioning the battlefields of World War One in a level of post-Game Of Thrones full-scale bloodshed not previously depicted, on small screen or on large.
The gruelling, graphic tracking scenes of trench warfare are interspersed with intimate conversations between the school children-cum-soldiers; we follow a group of fresh faced new recruits as they are inflated by pompous speeches from elders who should (and do) know better, blown like doomed leaves into the mud and blood and disease of the trenches. We see them buckle and break under the strain of their new reality…the ones that survive, anyway.
Meanwhile, we get a glimpse of the German high command: an embattled General, feeling betrayed by attempts to broker the Armistice, and the deputation sent to arrange that Armistice. The acting here is really first class, both by those on the battlefield, by the lonely, defeated General battling his demons, and the battle of the deputation to secure the longed-for peace.
I knew only one of the actors: Daniel Bruhel, who I recognised mainly because he played a villain in the Marvel movies. For a brief moment, I wondered if Disney had shelled up some of the cash for the adaptation, and were about to fold All Quiet On The Western Front into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That could have been fun. Captain America could have been involved. Spider-Man could have silenced the monstrous howling of the guns with a few well-slung webs. Doctor Strange could have manipulated time, dragging the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month forward and saving the life of our doomed hero. That would have worked nicely; after all, Benedict Cumberbatch fought in this war in both Warhorse and 1917, so he wouldn’t have looked that out of place making eldritch gestures and summoning glittering portals.
It would have been nice.
Anyway.
The film is timely, of course, not just to remind us about the horrors so recently endured by our own ancestors (and how paltry our own troubles are but comparison) but also because of recent world events. How far removed are those German school children from those tens of thousands called up across Russia?
Maybe the world hasn’t changed that much in the last hundred years, after all.