All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

I’ve just came out from the European gala premier of the movie on ZFF 18. Was quite a bit a thing which gave me goosbumps that Daniel Brühl literally watched the movie first time ever with us (2 rows in front of me..); he spoke super passionately about the project and how they’ve made it. Edward Berger and James Friend don’t really wait a single screenshot to catapult and slingshot the audience into the futile and meaningless horrors of war itself. From the very beginning until the very end the visual allegories (fox holes, mist, snowing, gloomy clouds and occasional raining etc.) are just persistent throughout to reinforce the message that its “All quiet on the western front”, the over looming threat of artillery barrage and chemical attacks. First lead actor Felix Kammerer does a superb job to play Paul Bäumer the primary protagonist with enough and convincing naïveté that you believe that among with his fellow brothers and friends (Albert, Haie, Friedrich, Kat, Tjaden) are indeed real life human beings who totally at the mercy of chance and randomness to live or die, even when they have to constantly fight for their survival. The action scenes on the other hand blew me away, I rarely watch things with an open mouth but this movie achieved it around mid-way when the Germans did an offensive and the French countered that with tanks among other things… The madness, the futility and the overall barbaric nature of survival is portrayed so well that its really true to the forewords Erich Maria Remarque gave to his novel: “This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand fact to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.”This, this is literally the German WWI war movie and story. Very well portrayed and well made film which I’m anticipating to win the Best Picture Oscar 2023.