Review: Netflix’s All Quiet on the Western Front delivers a well-known anti-war lament with frightening intensity

• nothing new in the West
• Directed by Edward Berger
• Written by Ian Stokell, Lesley Paterson and Edward Berger based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque
• With Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch and Daniel Bruehl
• classification R; 147 minutes
• Opens at the TIFF Lightbox in Toronto and the VIFF Center in Vancouver on October 14, other Canadian cities on October 21; Streaming on Netflix from October 28th

The Critic’s Choice

If nearly a century of cinema hasn’t already taught the hard-learned lesson that war is indeed hell, then a new version of nothing new in the West is here to remind you of this universal truth. Say hello to the news that Netflix has decided to fund a remake of the original, and perhaps still the strongest, anti-war film with a shrug, if that’s what you want. But shed the here-we-going-again cynicism and we have an impressive, if still somewhat familiar act of grimly determined cinema. This new take on an old story has the ability to terrify you into shocked pacifism while delivering a few little surprises along the way.

It could be argued that director Edward Berger’s remake is also something of a must-read – after all, this is the first time that German author Erich Maria Remarque’s seminal 1929 novel has been adapted in the author’s native language. The new film also benefits from an element previous adaptations lacked: the kind of massive budget that fills every frame and makes for an intimidating explosion of shock and awe. It’s all intense enough to compel viewers to wave the white flag, which is exactly Berger’s intention.

Tracing the naïve optimism and then deep disillusionment of a young German soldier sent to the Western Front during World War I, the film allows itself only a few moments of sunny humanity before plunging into a grueling hellscape. As Berger follows young Paul Baumer (Felix Kammerer), from a friendly schoolboy lured into the service by his rabid nationalist schoolteacher to a battle-hardened tank of a man with blood on his hands and mud on his face, the director tells a story which is as unrelenting and oppressive as its central conflict. This is a film of dirt, guts, rain and pain.

As Paul repeatedly manages to escape death while watching his friends in the Imperial German Army die one by one, the film offers the only consolation that there is no real consolation in this world at all. Take a look around, Berger implores, and wonder if this soulless chaos might not also consume you and your loved ones from the pen of an autocrat.

To emphasize the arbitrariness of the struggle, Berger and his co-authors add a subplot absent from Remarque’s novel: the struggle of German politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl, a recognizable face to Western audiences thanks to his work in Inglourious Basterds and the Marvel Cinematic Universe) to secure a truce between Germany and the Allies. Erzberger’s aristocratic misery, played out almost entirely in richly furnished dining rooms and train cars among well-dressed generals, provides an effective, if too neat, contrast between the fat luxury of politics and the emaciated desperation of trench warfare.

Ultimately, it is Berger’s handful of anachronistic traits that give him his nothing new in the West his most spectacular haunting moments. There’s his expert blend of computer and practical effects for the fight scenes – allowing for gruesomely inventive new ways of destroying the human body – as well as a pounding three-bar synth score from Volker Bertelmann, constantly keeping the audience on their toes and preparing for the absolute worst. This is reality, the film reminds us of that down to the very last second, which could happen at any moment.