All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)
Erich Maria Remarque's 1929 novel Im Westen nichts Neues is one of those books that has never really been out of print, and for good reason. Written from the ground level of the German trenches, it was one of the first major works to push back against the patriotic mythology surrounding the First World War, presenting the conflict not as a theatre of glory but as an organised industrial slaughter. The novel was famously banned and burned by the Nazi regime in 1933, which tells you quite a lot about how effectively it did its job. It had been adapted for the screen twice before: Lewis Milestone's 1930 Hollywood version remains a landmark of early sound cinema, and a 1979 television film followed in its footsteps. This 2022 version is something different again. It is the first German-language adaptation, and the first to be made in Germany itself, which gives the whole enterprise a weight and a political charge that neither of its predecessors could quite carry. For a country still working through its relationship with two catastrophic twentieth-century wars, telling this particular story from the inside is not a neutral act.
Edward Berger had built a solid reputation in prestige television before taking on this project, most notably as a director on Patrick Melrose and episodes of various acclaimed series on both sides of the Atlantic. His instinct here was clearly to go big: the film was produced by Amusement Park Films and Gunpowder Films with Netflix backing, giving it a budget that shows on screen in every frame of its 147-minute running time. The production design, the scale of the set pieces, the sheer logistical ambition of recreating the Western Front mud and wire and ruin, all of it reflects a level of resource that German-language war cinema has rarely had at its disposal. The film went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best International Feature Film, Best Cinematography, Best Original Score and Best Production Design, a haul that reflects the technical ambition on display rather than any particular originality of vision. It is worth noting, as context, that this sits in a broader tradition of European war films willing to look unflinchingly at atrocity, a tradition that includes works like Come and See and, in a different register, Quo Vadis, Aida?, both of which set a very high bar for what the genre can achieve when it refuses to look away.
The cast is largely made up of German theatre and television actors who will be unfamiliar to most English-speaking audiences, which turns out to be an asset rather than a liability. Felix Kammerer, making his feature film debut here, carries the central role of Paul Bäumer with a rawness that a more established name might have smoothed over. Albrecht Schuch, considerably better known in Germany following acclaimed work in Berlin Alexanderplatz, brings a lived-in quality to the veteran soldier Katczinsky that anchors the emotional core of the film whenever the spectacle threatens to swallow it whole. Aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus and Adrian Grünewald round out the group of young recruits with enough individuality to avoid the usual pitfall of war films, where supporting characters blur into interchangeable cannon fodder. The ensemble works, in other words, even if the script does not always give them the room they deserve. Macca has previously looked at how war and conflict are rendered on film in his review of 1917, and the comparison between these two productions is a natural one to reach for when thinking about where Berger's film sits in the recent landscape of the genre. For a point of contrast on how German cinema has approached its own history in a very different register, his piece on Germany, Year Zero is also worth a look.
There is a specific, deafening roar to the artillery barrages in Edward Berger’s 2022 adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front that practically rattles your teeth. Dropping us straight into the freezing, mud-soaked trenches from the German perspective, the film immediately establishes the First World War as an utterly horrific, soul-crushing experience. It’s a brutal opening that strips away any lingering romanticism about the "Great War", replacing it with a visceral, chaotic nightmare that feels less like a traditional history lesson and more like a descent into hell.
I have to give massive credit to the technical crew, because the sound design, special effects, and overall cinematography are genuinely top notch. Berger captures the bleak, monochromatic misery of the front lines with a striking, unflinching eye. Young Felix Kammerer, playing the idealistic recruit Paul Bäumer, does a cracking job of anchoring the picture alongside the brilliant Albrecht Schuch as the battle-hardened veteran Katczinsky. You can watch the light die in Kammerer's eyes as the romanticised version of soldiering is violently beaten out of him by the grim reality of mustard gas and trench warfare.
However, when you look past the sheer sensory assault, the actual narrative is a little basic for a film of this scale. It follows a very standard, predictable trajectory of wide-eyed youth meeting grim reality, which we've seen done a dozen times before. Honestly, if you're looking for the definitive cinematic experience of the First World War, Sam Mendes’ 1917 remains a far better, more emotionally gripping example of the same conflict. 1917 had a relentless, ticking-clock narrative engine that kept you on the edge of your seat, whereas Berger’s film, for all its visual majesty, occasionally feels like it's just waiting for the next big explosion to happen.
It’s a highly accomplished, deeply harrowing piece of cinema that does exactly what a war movie should do: make you absolutely dread the thought of being there. It might not reinvent the wheel in terms of its storytelling, and it lacks the narrative propulsion of its counterparts, but the sheer, unadulterated brutality on display is impossible to ignore. Berger has crafted a visually stunning, emotionally exhausting anti-war statement that is well worth your time, even if it doesn't quite take the top spot.
Berger's film arrives as part of a broader resurgence of interest in the First World War as cinematic subject matter, a conflict that seems to generate fresh perspectives with each generation that takes it on. Whether it matches the very best of that tradition is, as Macca's review makes clear, a question with a fairly honest answer. What it does do is remind audiences, in the most visceral terms available to the medium, that the distance of a century has not made the waste any more comprehensible. Polished but not revelatory, harrowing but familiar in its bones: that is not a dismissal. Sometimes a film does not need to be the definitive word to be worth two and a half hours of your attention. It just needs to mean it. This one does.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2022 | Watched: 2026-07-18
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: Netflix · Netflix Standard with Ads
Physical: Amazon US
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