It all starts with a peaceful landscape: a peaceful forest and majestic mountains bathed in the light of the rising sun. A fox can be heard somewhere and somewhere else – the sounds of a baby sucking from its mother.
Nature poses itself as if it were a canvas by Cézanne, and it seems that nothing can bring it out of its lethargy. But seconds later, the air is interrupted by a repeating three-note riff with a menacing sound.
The shot zooms in and its scale shows that the beauty and tranquility that serves as a lullaby for onlookers in the first few minutes will be devastated by a sea of tanks. The beautiful photo is about to turn into carnage, mired in mud, blood, bullets and the bodies of young soldiers.
This purely visual contrast between war and peace in the opening scene of “Quiet on the Western Front” (Quiet on the Western Front) provides an irrefutable basis for filming a new remake of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel of the same name.
However, film technology has clearly evolved since the last adaptation of Nothing New on the Western Front in 1979, and now the terror of war can be installed in the minds of viewers through highly detailed images and sets.
Photography alone is good enough to tell a story without words, and director Edward Berger used his qualities to dictate visceral impressions to his audience, as Sam Mendes did in 1917 before him.
In “Nothing New on the Western Front” you will not hear space calls on the need to withdraw military units. The characters don’t pirouette to demonstrate extraordinary heroism and they don’t bombard you with complaints about living like cattle. There are no multifaceted political views that seek a reasonable and logical way out of the conflict.
At the front, the logic is simple: some are friends, others are enemies. Because, of course, who will become of him and who will be a foreigner depends on which side of the story you are on.
As the first film directed by a German director and with an alternating script between English, German and French, the Berger version on the Netflix streaming platform transfers points of view in two parallel plots that alternate on the screen.
This is a script and directing decision that was absent from Remarque’s anti-war novel, and was likely added in the new adaptation to emphasize that not all high-ranking Germans are evil by default.
A narrative in Nothing New on the Western Front takes place through the eyes of recruit Paul Boehmer (Felix Kammermer), a soldier who joins the German army out of naive patriotism.
He gets drunk with some propaganda speeches, falsifies a document signed by his parents, wears the uniform with his old friends, imagining how he will make a few hits, the war will be over and he will march victorious towards Paris, full of the pride he fought in the name of the homeland.
However, the reality of the battles turned out to be different. The first day in the trenches shatters Boehmer’s dreams of knightly fighting and his arrogant, boyish fervor is quickly replaced by the bloodshed and chaos of the camp.
Alongside his experiences runs the prospect of the height of the First World War from the chair of the politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl), who leads the German delegation trying to make peace.
He seeks compromise, considers the tone of the negotiations, fluctuates options, and while the agony of the soldiers exists somewhere in his mind as a reason to leverage the ceasefire effort, it’s hard to feel Erzberger on par with Boehmer when it comes to of the consequences of the war.
As Erzberger crouches in rooms with soft armchairs and thick, heavy curtains, wearing masks laden with snacks, Boehmer shoots an army of tanks with a rifle and watches his friends get burned alive by the advancing forces.
Although it departs slightly from the first person of Remarque’s novel, this intertextuality in the scenes shows that Eduard Berger did not for a moment think of devaluing the tragedy of the soldier at the front with the symmetrical weight of a politician. As much as Erzberger suffers, his torments are only a nuance of the general background.
The film goes back and forth between the two narratives and as the old fight, the young die. The battles become more grueling and brutal and the camera only changes angle to show the full extent of the invasion of humanity and nature.
Nothing new on the Western Front under Berger’s leadership is the perfect rebuke to war because it absolutizes the horror of the battlefield without resorting to propaganda.
The film is quite eloquent through the spectacular views – through the “green” soldiers with rosy cheeks, whose faces become targets, through the purulent wounds, through the trampled houses, through the breakfast of two raw eggs …
With laconic jokes and dialogues, Berger makes it clear that there are no winners and losers at the front, but only witnesses to the alternation of horrible events. Each of which is darker than the last.
“Nothing New on the Western Front” is available on the Netflix streaming platform from October 28th.
