We should really have a thread for Edward Bergers 2022 version of this story.
It seems like a QT3 movie. It’s got war and everything!
I watched it. 1917 was better. And so was the 1979 version.
Not thrilled with then changes to the ending.
I loved it. Hadn’t seen any previous versions, or read the book. Thought it was gorgeous and terrifying.
I should really revisit 1917 sometime, though. My experience with it in the theater was totally ruined by a noisy and inconsiderate audience.
It seems obvious to me that Edward Berger has really had some balls in adapting a classic book that is named for its ending, which is also the climax, and then changing that ending.
I can see how that would really upset a lot of people, especially if they have feelings about the book. I wouldn’t want anyone to do that with any of my favorite books.
That being said, me being a troglodyte and all, I have not read the book - I opted for Ernst Jüngers Storm of Steel, which may have been the lesser choice - so I just watched it as a movie and a story I didn’t know, and I really liked it as that.
I think a lot of people also have a problem with the ending that Edward Berger came up with, but I thought it was a pretty good image of the utter senselessness of the time, and what it cost.
The New Yorker has some thoughts on it:
“All Quiet” is a story of death, of the physical and emotional horrors of war, but the creamy surfaces and luscious landscapes, the textures of uniforms and the construction of trenches, are all fine and enticing. Its actors’ grooming is salon-worthy. Its lighting is suave. The soldiers get slathered in mud, but it’s prestige mud, and slathered with care; the stage blood is only the highest quality; the movie is filled with gore, with gruesome deaths—but they’re luxurious deaths. The show of care and expense, the fulsome dignity that the fussy production lends to the story, is a sickening enactment of one of the movie industry’s own enduring blights: the laundering of history in the machine of business. The Academy found the right vehicle for a perverse self-celebration. It’s a show of earnestness that vaunts, above all, its own technique, a nod to internationalism and diversity that flaunts Hollywood’s—and Netflix’s—homogenizing power.
Thanks @MelesMeles for the thread! Here’s what I said in the “What did you watch” thread:
As far as this goes:
I do love me some New Yorker, but honestly sometimes they need to get over their pretension. (Though if they did that, what would they have left to put in the magazine? Yuk yuk.)
Exactly, and that’s what irks me about the criticism in the New Yorker. I’m thinking, did they actually watch the movie? Were they watching it with the sound off?
To me it felt the way I want an anti-war movie to feel, which is horrible. There’s no glory there. There’s only horror and waste.
Maybe it was beautiful. But it did not feel beautiful.
Aye. A good war movie, IE a horror movie.
I saw this and liked it as well. I think it probably could have been about 20 minutes shorter and still have been just as good. The performances, costuming, cinematography, all great.
Personally, I understood why they had some perspective of the politicians and generals coming to the armistice, showing that part of the war, as stark contrast to what Paul is experiencing on the lines, but it just took too long, and slowed the film down a lot. The book accomplished this goal in a different way, which I think just worked better.
I don’t mind that the ending is changed, the message remains the same, about the pointlessness of it all. Definitely worth watching though
4/5
Absolutely this. And all the worse because unlike a horror-genre movie, it actually happened (to millions of people) and will happen again. I think if a war movie is not a horror movie, it’s a lie.
You’re right, but I would have preferred those 20 minutes to go into the pre-war parts of it: school, training, etc.
Yeah, like I said, I think it wasn’t paced particularly well. They spent a lot of time with Daniel Bruhl’s character, which I think took away from Paul’s story a bit too much.
Does that feature more heavily in the book? Is it sort of like a Full Metal Jacket for the First World War?
I don’t think so? I don’t really remember the book. I just thought it would have been nice to have a little bit more time with his friends, so that when there’s “the one who died on his first day at the front” it has a bit more meaning.
Edit: and also to contrast the home front with the, uh, front front. Because they all die (spoiler warning) you don’t get so much of the “people at home will never understand what it was like” but I think it would have been nice to have more setup for “what the schoolteacher told them they would see” vs “what it was like”.
Right, that I get. I honestly wasn’t sure who was dying when, and I felt weird about that too :)
I am kind of happy that they didn’t contrast it with the homefront, because I think in order to capture the horror of the experience, I think you have to stay with the soldiers.
And you’re absolutely right that there are a lot of scenes that stay with you. The one I keep thinking about is the grenade strike on the dugout, because it really brings home how random it all is.
There is no good place to be. There is no cover that will help you if you take a direct hit. There are so many things happening that you have no control over. Death is everywhere, and you just don’t know when you’ll meet.
Yeah, the book has a look at life back at home from the front, that this movie doesn’t have. At the very least if they did more at the start to show that sort of thing, it would have helped contrast with the latter part of the film.
To me, it is after the first artillery barrage, and he just finds his friend’s glasses.
Didn’t protagonist get some r&r to visit mom and snuggle up to mary jane rottencrotch for a bit before getting shipped back to the abattoir? I remember that description of abject poverty and hopelessness quite a fitting counterpoint to the direct horror of the gas, grenades and barbed wire of the trenches. But I might be remembering a different book. I’m getting old and have smoked weed and gotten punched in the head for hobbies in the past. Fuck it if I know.
Not familiar with the original, the movie seemed more interested in being an art piece with just things happening in a very carefully laid out set than having much to say, or even being particularly faithful to history with cardboard cutouts as historical figures.
I’d say it’s alright, it at least succeeds in showing the disorientation, the pointlessness, and the embers of some eldritch strength that kept men going, but it manages to whitewash, besides the entente, the SPD as enlightened courageous centrists, and fuck that.
Huh, that wasn’t the impression I got. On the battlefield, the entente is just a sort of unnamed enemy that seems essentially equivalent to the Germans (except for the tanks and flamethrowers, of course). In the negotiations part they mostly seemed passive, just had one French general being a jerk, which didn’t seem like whitewashing to me. I also did not think that it made the SPD seem good, just desperate to make peace over the generals. (Though the German generals certainly came out worse as they seemed to be just bloodthirsty.)
I will agree that the peace negotiations part was the weakest part of the movie and probably could have been cut entirely.
I watched it a while ago, maybe it debuted earlier in EU-land.
Yes, it would be hard to personalize them on nearly all the faceless battlefield scenes, but on the others, they kind of seemed lost puppies holding back the barbarians, which is only fair up to a point.
Maybe it was the contrast with (unnamed, but clearly) Ludendorff, but I got the vibe of the civilian politician finally being allowed to go against the crazy glory seeking military.