All Quiet on the Western Front (2022 film)

All Quiet on the Western Front (German: Im Westen nichts Neues, lit. 'Nothing New in the West') is a 2022 German epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque. It is the third film adaptation of the book, after the 1930 and 1979 versions. Co-written, directed and co-produced by Edward Berger, it stars Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, Sebastian Hülk, Aaron Hilmer, Edin Hasanovic, and Devid Striesow.
Set during World War I, it follows the life of an idealistic young German soldier named Paul Bäumer. After enlisting in the German Army with his friends, Bäumer finds himself exposed to the realities of war, shattering his early hopes of becoming a hero as he does his best to survive. The film adds a parallel storyline not found in the book, which follows the armistice negotiations to end the war.
All Quiet on the Western Front premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2022, and was released to streaming on Netflix on October 28. The film received positive reviews for its artistry and relevant anti-war message, however German and Anglophone critics disagreed over the film's faithfulness to Remarque's source material. It received a leading 14 nominations at the 76th British Academy Film Awards (winning seven, including Best Film) and nine at the 95th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four: Best International Feature, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score, and Best Production Design. The four wins tied All Quiet on the Western Front with Fanny and Alexander (1982), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Parasite (2019) as the most-awarded non-English language film in the Oscars' history. It was nominated in twelve categories for the 2023 German Film Awards, and won eight, including Silver Award.
In 1917, three years into World War I, 17-year-old Paul Bäumer enthusiastically enlists in the Imperial German Army alongside friends Albert Kropp, Franz Müller, and Ludwig Behm. They listen to a patriotic speech by a school official and unknowingly receive uniforms from soldiers killed in a previous battle. After they are deployed in Northern France near La Malmaison, they are befriended by Stanislaus "Kat" Katczinsky, an older soldier. Their romantic view of the war is shattered by the realities of trench warfare on the Western Front, and Ludwig is killed by artillery on the first night.
On November 7, 1918, German State Secretary Matthias Erzberger, weary of mounting losses, meets with German High Command to persuade them to begin armistice talks with the Allied powers. Meanwhile, Paul and Kat steal a goose from a farm to share with Albert, Franz, and another veteran, Tjaden Stackfleet, with whom they have grown close behind the front in Champagne. Kat, who is illiterate, gets Paul to read him a letter from his wife and worries that he will be unable to reintegrate into peacetime society. Franz spends the night with a local French woman and brings back her scarf as a souvenir.
On November 9, Erzberger and the German delegation board a train bound for the Forest of Compiègne to negotiate a ceasefire. Paul and his friends go on a mission to find 60 missing recruits sent to reinforce their unit and discover that they were killed by gas after taking off their masks too soon. General Friedrichs, who opposes the armistice talks, orders an attack before French reinforcements arrive. That night, Erzberger's delegation reaches the Forest of Compiègne, and Paul's regiment is sent to the front to prepare to attack the French lines.
On November 10, Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch gives the Germans 72 hours to accept the non-negotiable Allied terms. Meanwhile, the German attack takes the French front line after hand-to-hand fighting but is routed by a combined arms counterattack, in which the French use Saint-Chamond tanks to overcome German defenses. Franz is separated from the group, and Albert is killed trying to surrender when he is set on fire with a flamethrower. Trapped in a crater in no man's land with a French soldier, Paul stabs him and watches him die slowly, becoming remorseful and asking for forgiveness from his dead body.
Erzberger learns of Kaiser Wilhelm II's abdication and receives instructions from field marshal Paul von Hindenburg to accept the Allied terms. Paul returns to his unit and sees them celebrating the war's imminent end. He finds a wounded Tjaden, who gives him Franz's scarf, indicating Franz has been killed. Paul and Kat bring him food, but Tjaden, knowing that his injured leg will be amputated, chooses to fatally stab himself in the throat with the fork they brought him rather than live as an amputee.
On November 11, Erzberger's delegation signs an armistice set to take effect at 11:00 AM. After learning of the ceasefire, Paul and Kat steal from the farm one last time, but Kat is shot by the farmer's vengeful son and dies before arriving at an infirmary. General Friedrichs, who wants to end the war with at least a German victory out of spite, orders an attack to start at 10:45 AM. Paul kills as many French soldiers as he can before being bayoneted from behind, seconds before 11:00 AM. Paul stumbles out into the trenches and marvels at the end of conflict as he dies from his wound.
A short time later, a newly-arrived German recruit that Paul had earlier saved in the combat finds Paul's mud-caked body and picks up Franz's scarf, but not the dog tag that acts as the identifier of dead soldiers. As a result, Paul's death is not recorded.
The English version was produced by Liquid Violet in London. James Daniel Wilson adapted the script and directed the dubbing.
Writers Lesley Paterson and Ian Stokell spent 16 years bringing their film project to fruition. They initially obtained an option for the film rights to the book in 2006 but faced challenges in securing funding for both the film's production and the annual option renewal, which cost between $10,000 and $15,000. In a resourceful attempt to raise funds, Paterson participated in XTERRA triathlons starting in 2011, ultimately winning the top prize of $20,000. This allowed her to maintain the option by winning five triathlon world championships over the years. Paterson and Stokell estimated that they spent approximately $200,000 to preserve the option during the 16-year period. The film was eventually announced in February 2020 with Edward Berger directing and Daniel Brühl as part of the ensemble cast.
Principal photography began on 9 March 2021 in Prague, Czech Republic, and lasted 55 days. The film cost $20 million.
Cinematographer James Friend worked closely with another DP, wildlife cameraman Rob Hollingworth, in order to capture the fox sequence in the beginning of the film. "We had to essentially put a pregnant fox in a purpose-built den that was designed for shooting with camera traps. The fox then gave birth to the cubs in this den and that turned into what you saw on camera...The only way to get those shots is basically to raise the cubs in the environment in which you’re filming them, so the mother and the cubs feel completely at home. Then, if a probe lens comes in to get a closeup of a cub or the mom, they’re already used to it by that stage. Essentially, we wanted it to look like a David Attenborough piece and not like a movie."
All Quiet on the Western Front premiered at the 47th Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2022. It played exclusively at the Paris Theater in New York on October 7 before expanding to other theatres from October 14. It launched on Netflix, which acquired distribution rights prior to production, worldwide on October 28. From its release on Netflix to March 3, 2023, the film logged over 150 million hours viewed worldwide. Viewership tripled after the film's Oscar and BAFTA nominations, and was on the global Top 10 Non-English Film list for 14 weeks and in the Top 10 Films in 91 countries.
A making-of documentary called Making All Quiet on the Western Front was released on Netflix globally on February 20, 2023. A Collector's Edition Blu-ray was released on March 28, 2023, in the United States and April 24, 2023, in the United Kingdom.
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of 165 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website's consensus reads: "Both timely and timeless, All Quiet on the Western Front retains the power of its classic source material by focusing on the futility of war." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Ben Kenigsberg, writing for The New York Times, found the film to be less impressive than the 1930 version, but appreciated the pounding soundtrack. He also praised the addition of a parallel plot tracking the armistice, even if it diverged from the first person narrative of the novel. He found the tweaked fate of the characters to be narratively powerful. Jamelle Bouie in The New York Times said the 2022 version missed the essence of the novel, which is not just antiwar, but also portrays the alienation and terrible toll even on those who come home. "Remarque is not as interested in the war and geopolitics as he is in the war as human absurdity made manifest." In a sequence of the 1930 film, omitted from the 2022 film, Paul comes home on leave and can't relate to former teachers and other adults. "You still think it's beautiful and sweet to die for your country, don't you?" says Paul. "The first bombardment taught us better." According to Bouie, "The inclusion of this political subplot and the exclusion of Paul's return home transforms All Quiet on the Western Front from a psychological examination of the soldier's experience and a condemnation of war into a much simpler story of virtuous soldiers and cynical leaders who betrayed them."
Mark Kermode says that, although it is on Netflix, there is an excellent reason to see it in cinemas because it is "visually very, very impressive, overwhelming, and gruelling." "It is harrowing of course ... and it should be." Cultural historian Bethany Wyatt makes a case for its being the "finest First World War film to date". She claims that it "is faithful to the spirit of Remarque's novel". Wyatt says "it is difficult to match the power of the 1930 All Quiet on the Western Front's conclusion," ... "but the 2022 adaptation succeeds in crafting its own elegy for the men who did not return home."
Journalist Martin Schwickert of the RND media group called the film "frighteningly current" in light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, saying it "made plain what war means for those who have to fight it". Producer Malte Grunert said the film tells the "story of a young man who falls prey to right-wing nationalist propaganda – believing that war is an adventure, and that they are on the right side. It is a timeless story, that we now see played out live in Ukraine."
Filmmaker Kimberly Peirce praised Berger's direction, saying that he "captures the humanity of his narrative by depicting the devastating transformation of our protagonist from a godly beautiful innocent eager-to-fight young soldier to a grunt following every order still unable to stop the cascading loss of his friends, to a man unleashed, echoing the monster he was set to slay."
Many German critics praised the action sequences but found fault with the film's considerable deviations from the book, which is required reading in many German schools. As Britain's New Statesman summarised, "...in Germany, it is seen as shallow, cynical and 'horny for Oscars'". Hubert Wetzel, writing in Süddeutsche Zeitung, criticized the film's alterations to the book stating that "you have to ask yourself whether director Berger has even read Remarque's novel". He also criticizes that Berger added characters at will, omitted central characters and scenes, and changed the ending so that the title and content no longer had any connection to each other. The film also received negative reviews from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Military historian Sönke Neitzel praised the battle scenes as being more historically accurate than the previous adaptations but criticized the film for depicting soldiers being shot to prevent desertion, as only 48 soldiers had been executed during the war.
In 2023, Collider ranked it as the "Best Historical Epic of All Time," writing "War is not what they expect, and the film wastes no time in presenting the horrors of the battlefield in a raw, harsh and really horrifying manner. With massive set pieces, excruciatingly long one-take shots and no shortage of violence and blood, it's a horrible, painful-to-watch film that, unfortunately, is both significant and timely today." MovieWeb ranked it at number 7 on its list of "The Best Anti-War Movies Ever Made," writing "The battle scenes are incredibly explicit, and the goal of the original and the remake are to accurately depict the horrors of war to ensure no one who watches would ever have the desire to go, and they do just that" and called it "a great example that sometimes a remake can be better than the original." It also topped the site's list of the "Best War Movies from the Last 10 Years," writing that "The story does a fantastic job of providing insight into how so many young people get roped into participating in war. The change in Paul's personality when he witnesses the deaths of people he's close to and others is heartbreaking to watch. To those unfamiliar with the source material, it’s unclear if Paul's arc is a descent into an outright villain or if still holds onto his pre-war self. The moments where it can lean either way is a fascinating character study."
Despite the film's positive reception, some German critics and diversity advocates criticized its deviations from the source material, accusing Netflix of producing it as "Oscar bait." The film faced strong competition from Decision to Leave and Everything Everywhere All at Once but managed to outperform them in major categories at the BAFTA and Academy Awards, while guild and critics' awards favored other contenders. Some critics also took issue with the director’s alterations and omissions of key elements from the novel, arguing that these changes were made to increase the film’s chances during awards season.