All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

I will divide this review into two parts, in the first part I will attempt to comment on the 2022 version of All Quiet on the Western Front without consideration of it's 1930 predecessor, and in the second part I will ruthlessly compare it to the previous film.

Part I 

All Quiet on the Western Front is an anti-war film in the vein of Sam Mendes' recent 1917.  Both films, are set in the front line trenches during World War I, and utilize the full arsenal of Hollywood's special effects machine to graphically depict the horrors of war.  While 1917 was deliberately focused on the exploits of two soldiers, and saw the world through their eyes, All Quiet on the Western Front takes a slightly broader view, and the narrative cuts between a close-knit band of young Germans soldiers, a proud German commander, and a German diplomat who is desperately seeking to bring an end to the unnecessary deaths on a battlefield where Germany cannot hope to prevail.  When done well, this multi-faceted approach can be effective, and Edward Berger, the director of All Quiet on the Western Front is successful in utilizing this technique to convey the personal motivations that explain why war is so complicated.  I say that Berger is successful, because when the film came to a close, I felt that I had a better understanding of each of the characters, and they were not simply caricatures, but were authentic representations of how people truly act.  I will also say that Berger's approach, which included characters who represent actual historical figures, was intriguing in such a way that it has prompted me to explore the politics of the time more extensively.  Anytime a film compels me to learn more, I feel that it has been successful. 

Part II

It is fascinating that two films, made almost 100 years apart, with certain scenes almost shot-for-shot, and lines of dialogue spoken word-for word, could be so fundamentally different, yet both are proclaiming the same message.  The primary difference between the two films, is that the 1930 version takes a narrower, more focused view on the soldiers' plight, and is not interested in the politics of war.  Perhaps this is because the film was made at a time when its audience would have been fully aware of the politics, and no explanation was needed.  That being said, the 2022 version did not use the broader view simply for providing historical context, rather it examined how the same fallibilities that plague the lowliest soldier, are also encountered by the highest ranking decision makers.  As mentioned in the stand-alone review of the 1930 version, it was produced and released in the time between World War I and World War II, and therefore its filmmakers were not aware of the atrocities that German soldiers would commit a few short years later.  The same cannot be said for the 2022 version, which has been made after the fact, in a world that must come to grips with the fact that young men, who are indistinguishable from any other before or since, were capable of perpetrating the Holocaust against the Jewish people.  I must admit that I am somewhat surprised that the modern retelling of this story was silent to this fact.  I think that it is inexcusably narrow-minded to reach a conclusion that men are simply victims of their leaders, and that they do not have any moral obligations that supersede man's authority.  Of course this is a common theme of most anti-war films, all the blame is laid at the feet of the politicians and generals, while the soldiers are all portrayed as victims.  How can it be that when a war is justified, and the film is about the "good guys", the individual soldiers are portrayed as heroes, but only the sociopathic German general is a "bad guy" as defined in Berger's 2022 film?  Perhaps I'm being to harsh in regards to this new version of All Quiet on the Western Front, but what seemed like an interesting piece of history in a film made before World War II, now seems like an overly simplistic exercise in naiveté.