Remaking an Oscar-winning film is a risky proposition. Why spoil the success?
But when German director Edward Berger decided to remake Lewis Milestone’s 1930 epic “All Quiet on the Western Front” for Netflix (streaming Friday), he was on a mission to tell the futile (and fatal) story of a 17 year old world. German World War I conscript from a German perspective.
As Berger saw it, whenever American or British directors make war films, it is impossible to avoid letting a well-deserved heroism seep into such endeavors, suiting the point of view of their victors.
Accordingly, Berger wanted to anchor his “All Quiet” to the national yoke of loss and shame that weighs on many Germans.
“As far as the two world wars are concerned, as a German there is nothing to be proud of in this part of history. There is only guilt, terror, l horror and a deep sense of responsibility for the past,” says Berger, 52. “It’s in me. It’s in my children.
The result is perhaps one of the most searing and moving depictions of war to ever scramble the screen. It contains the stunning battle sequences of ‘Saving Private Ryan’, the gruesome trench warfare of ‘1917’ and the exploration of quieter moments in soldiers’ lives seen in ‘Apocalypse Now’.
Despite being nearly 100 years apart, the two film versions of Erich Maria Remarque’s enduring 1929 novel echo each other, largely due to their reliance on the book.
Young men are drawn into battle by passionate talk; the brutal reality of battle sinks in quickly as they search for food and watch each other die; Paul, the protagonist played by a haunting Felix Kammerer, kills a Frenchman in hand-to-hand combat and immediately regrets it; and in the end there is only an ignominious defeat.
But Berger’s version reaches a new level of poignancy and even urgency given the tenor of the time.
It does this first by focusing on how young German boys were turned into cannon fodder by adults spouting nationalist dogma, and secondly by highlighting how Germany’s surrender at the end of the World War I – and the sense of shame of defeat stirred up by politicians – gave rise years later to Nazism and eventually World War II.
In that, says Berger, is a lesson for all of us in 2022.
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“I’m sensitive to nationalist movements, so with the rise of Trump and Brexit and the far right in Hungary and Italy, it’s important to remember that 100 years ago all of this led us to a disaster,” he said.
Specifically, the armistice signed between Germany and France to end World War I immediately generated feelings of shame and anger among German army officers, feelings that would turn into revenge apart from whole in the form of Hitler’s populist rise.
Accordingly, Berger’s “All Quiet” notably departs from the 1930 book and film to include numerous scenes showing German politicians deciding to surrender while their military counterparts fume. The director is hopeful but realistic about whether his central message will be received.
“Whether the film’s anti-war sentiment lands is up to viewers to decide,” he says.
Two LA Brits helped bring Netflix’s ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ to life
The original “All Quiet” held up remarkably well, with its deft camerawork, solid performances and moving visuals for its time. The film won two Oscars, Best Picture and Best Director.
But Berger was able to bring a new level of lyricism and dread to his version that could only be delivered by modern technology — and a healthy (though undisclosed) Netflix budget.
“The budget was probably lower than you thought,” laughs Berger. “But it was about doing what we could to get the camera right next to Paul as much as possible. In the mud. In the trenches. With death.
Berger’s skills aside, this “All Quiet” would never have made it to the screen had it not been for LA-based British writing and production team Ian Stokell and Lesley Paterson, who bought the rights to the novel in 2006 and waited 16 years to bring it to the screen.
“The time had to be right to do this, and in the end it was. We had a German director to do justice to this story and a streamer who was ready to support him financially,” explains Paterson, who adds that the pandemic has helped propel foreign cinema to the fore, as evidenced by the 2020 Oscar win for the South Korean film “Parasite.”
Although the film is in German with subtitles, the writers, who share that credit with Berger, expressed no concern that it would put off American viewers.
“This novel is still being taught in American schools, and people accept subtitles when they want to see something good,” Paterson says.
Stokell says that beyond any particularly powerful dialogue, he hopes what really hits home is “that feeling of betrayal of those young children by those in power, something you can see happening right now in regarding what Russian leaders are saying to soldiers leaving for Ukraine.
Things were never calm on the Western Front, where 3 million people died
The new film offers a particularly powerful moment that Paterson imagined while training for another triathlon (she’s a multiple world champion in the Xterra series). In the brief but powerful sequence, we see rows and rows of women wordlessly washing a mountain of bloody uniforms back to a new group of eager recruits.
The Western Front – where Germany hoped to break through to conquer France – was never calm. He also never budged much, as neither side gained significant ground. Over several years, some 3 million young men died there.
Kammerer says that as an Austrian he feels “particularly responsible for telling this dark part of the story”, as Austria’s rapid envelopment in the Third Reich helps set the stage for more. other takeovers to come.
“I hope that viewers, especially younger ones, will be drawn into the telling of this absurd and brutal part of our history, and can begin to think about violence, war and humanity in different ways, helping them reimagine a world in which the horrors of war could become a bitter relic of the past,” he says.
“But first,” he adds, “we have to see the atrocities before we can overcome them.”
Berger’s version of “All Quiet on the Western Front” provides such a front-row seat, evoking mindless horrors one would only want to experience in the movies.
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