The Problem With All Quiet On The Western Front (2022)

I wanted to love this movie so bad. But the ending absolutely wrecked it for me, personally. The book's ending is so powerful and heart wrenching. We spend the whole book with Paul as he slowly disassociates from his youth. We watch him kill. We watch him lose his best friends. We feel his soul leaving his traumatized youthful body. He soldiers on, breaking slowly. And "He fell in October of 1918, on a day so quiet and still, that the army action report confined itself to a single sentence: All quiet on the western front..." He dies a month before the war ends, and his death is meaningless. This boy we grew to know and care about falls, and it simply doesn't matter to the machine that keeps grinding boys like him and his friends without so much as a shrug. When I first read it it broke me. For me, I really found I resented the ending of the new movie. Him ramboing his way through the french soldiers is silly to me. Paul isn't supposed to go out in a heroic last stand. He dies on a quiet day, with no ceremony or fanfare, our only solace as the reader is that "his face wore an expression of calm. As if almost glad the end had finally come." Sorry for the rant. But this is one of the most powerful books I've read. And I wanted them to capture Remarque's meaning, and it didn't quite do it for me. I really love your analysis. You make really great observations, and I seriously appreciate your insights!

The issue is that it wasn’t All Quiet on the Western Front. It was a WWI movie that had some characters with the same names as in All Quiet. I was beyond pissed when they didn’t show the home leave and just had Kat talk about it. You can’t have All Quiet without that sequence, it is the crux of the whole story.

For me it just looks like the 2022 film doesn't have the guts to tell the people that the civilians in WW1 were part of the problem, that the war they "fought" was based on pointless and fake rivalries, that the civilians acted more like spectators watching as their friends and family members died and refused to listen to them, the people that enlisted kids for the war, or how they believed that their sacrifice was meaningful, that peace agreements were actions of cowards, that they needed to win the war or else.

"We could be brothers. But they don't want us to know that" such a sad but true statement 😥

I really preferred the '79 version honestly. Even if it was somewhat corny. From what I remember the battles had no music and it was just the blaring sound of machine-like gunfire and artillery, which is better imo. Even specific scenes like him in the crater with the French soldier and the ending are better in the previous versions. Thank you for this analysis dude!

I loved the 1979 one. The biggest things missing for me was the scene where Paul went back to Germany expecting a hero’s welcome only to find a ghost town with people indifferent and miserable. Also, the boot camp scenes were great, I loved the part where they pick on their old officer when he finally made it to the front. And his death too. It’s an oddly peaceful death. Sudden, gives the feeling he can finally rest after all the horror and loss. Kind of romanticises death.

What I missed in all movies, but what was an obvious conclusion in the book, was the moment when they entered an abandoned British trench, and found an abundance of canned food that the British had left behind. Much of it had 'made in the USA' written on it. In the book, it was clear to Paul and all his comrades that Germany had lost the war. If the Allies would simply abandon such treasures, they realised they had no chance of winning. The fact that Germany had lost WW1 and that everyone fighting it knew it, was very much made clear in the book. That was the main reason the Nazis banned the book. It told the truth about the 'stab in the back' myth that got Hitler elected.

The worst part about the 2022 movie is how it completely fumbled its message by making every single French character an inhumane murderer (or an аsshoIe if they can't be a murderer, like Foch). The whole point of that scene in the crater with the dying Frenchman was to show that the soldiers from either side were both just scared young men with no reason to fight beyond "even if you don't kiII him, do you trust that the guy on the other trench won't kiII you?", a sort of "prisoner's dilemma". The movie throws it all out the window by making even a French fuсking child more of a cold blooded kiIIer than the average German soldier. "Why are we fighting the French? Oh yeah, because they might as well be literal demons". Contrary to a lot of people, I also didn't like the ending. The point of the ending in the book is that in war, death just happens. No epic fight, no going out in a blaze of glory. Paul just dies and his death is so insignificant, the report of the day he died simply states that all was quiet on the western front.

I agree that the 1930 and 1979 versions are more true to the spirit of the novel. One of the worst offences of the 2022 version is the "one last attack" before the armistice. This is at odds with actual history as well as not part of the novel, though it does oddly allow Paul to actually see the end of the war while dying from it. The 1930 version is incredible for so many reasons. One is that it was made so long ago, when so many film techniques were new. Another is that in just 15 months the novel was published in German, translated into English, the screenplay was written for the film, then filmed, edited, and released! And director Lewis Milestone was only 35 years old. Furthermore, the 1930 film deviates from the novel by adding the "butterfly" ending, which is simply brilliant and extremely poignant. The final view of the enthusiastic young soldiers superimposed over a graveyard is chilling, memorable, and gets the intended message across. All other versions after 1930 can refer back to this film for inspiration, but the 1930 film was the pioneer. That it still stands the test of time is incredible.

I only saw the 1930s adaptation once at 15, and the scenes where he goes home stuck with me for the rest of my life. The 2022 version is visually amazing, but it feels hollow. Whereas the 1930s version is so grim but emotional that it forever taught a grade 10 history class that the enemy in war are humans too. They aren't the monsters the propaganda make them out to be. We need to see things from their perspective to understand the conflict. It broadened my very young mind and taught me to see everything from multiple points of view. There's no way a history teacher can show the 2022 version to his class.

This was exactly my problem with the 2022 movie. If you changed the title no one would ever know it was All Quiet.

The first version was made within 15 years of the World War. It was fresh in everyone's mind. My mom remembered how the future General MacArthur hosed down and burned the camps of the Bonus Marchers, the Veterans of the war who had been promised a substantial post war financial bonus by the Wilson administration and which they never got, part of the reason Hoover was hated and blamed for the Depression. But it was the unkeepable false promises that they made to keep the soldiers fighting.

I feel like the people who made the 2022 version wanted to make a different movie but weren't allowed to

Unironically i had the same experience after returning from Ukraine, we were having dinner in a restaurant and one of my non-combat friends corrected me in my statements about the conditions on the frontline. All in the year 2022.

The worst thing about trauma is that it estranges you not just from the people around you but from yourself. If you recall from the book, young Paul is full of dreams and curiosity. By the time of his death all that is gone, buried under layer after layer of trauma.

I actually like the 1979 tv version of it. Yeah it was pretty cheesy sometimes, but it really is the best adaptation of it considering how it was made and what it included. This version left out A LOT of stuff.

For those interested, I also highly recommend Remarque's sequal to All Quiet: The Road Back. It follows the survivors after the war and delves even deeper in the themes discussed here. Excellent analysis of a somewhat disappointing film adaptation

There is definitely a major disconnect from the first two movies. This new one loses important elements while introducing new ones that fail to have any impact. Baumer's friends are not really "Personalized" so that when they die, it is much less traumatic. Basically "Redshirts" from Star Trek.

The Netflix film did not truly resemble the actual story. Granted, it was good at portraying the horrors of the war, and the attitudes of many commanders. But the book really aimed at showing what it did to the soldier. Paul comes home and cannot connect with anyone. The old man in the pub, for instance, arguing with Paul about the war Paul is fighting in. The interaction between Paul and the French soldier was nowhere near as personal as it was in the book.

I was disappointed they did not include the scene in which Paul returns to the school. It was very powerful in the original movie and had an important message that we should always be skeptical of state education. IMHO this was the most significant scene in the original movie.