The Ukraine war is currently causing us to look east with horror. The remake of “Nothing New in the West” looks in the opposite direction and looks back more than 100 years. But the material has lost none of its topicality.
At least in this country, “Nothing New in the West” penned by Erich Maria Remarque is probably the classic of anti-war literature par excellence. And that despite the fact that the “novel”, as the work written in 1928 has only been called since 1957, is actually just a sober description of the war.
In his book, Remarque not only processed his own experiences as a soldier of the German Reich on the western front in the First World War (1914-1918). He also incorporated the reports and diary entries of other front-line fighters into his narrative, through which the fictional Paul Bäumer leads from the first-person perspective.
The term “novel” is therefore quite appropriate. However, this does not detract from the reality of the description. At best, this was disputed by the Nazis, who burned copies of “Nothing New in the West” by the thousands. For everyone else, however, the book is a constant reminder of the horrors of armed conflict, especially in times of industrial warfare and weapons of mass destruction.
Remarque’s factual description of the gruesome events in the trenches, bomb craters and clouds of poison gas alone is enough to elevate “Nothing New in the West” from a war to an anti-war narrative. It didn’t need any ideology or a raised index finger. A circumstance that accommodated conscientious objectors to military service in the Federal Republic. Referring to Remarque’s novel was relatively harmless and therefore part of the standard repertoire of denial.
“Nothing New in the West” has already been filmed twice. The first time actually in 1930. With resounding success: not only director Lewis Milestone received an Oscar for his work. The strip was also awarded “Best Film” at the time. The second film adaptation dates from 1979. Although only conceived as a TV production, this adaptation, directed by Delbert Mann, also received positive reviews and a Golden Globe for best TV film.
What Milestone and Mann have in common: They were both US directors and their films were Anglo-Saxon productions. In Germany, however, nobody had dared to interpret the novel from their own country on the big screen. Until now. Edward Berger, who worked in the past as a director on “Tatort” or on the much-praised series “Deutschland 83”, has set about staging “Nothing New in the West” for the first time through German glasses for the cinema and the Netflix streaming service .
Berger bases his story only loosely on Remarque’s template. The film deviates significantly from the novel in many places. This is also due to the fact that he does not limit himself to the subjective perspective of the soldier Paul Bäumer (Felix Kammerer). For example, Berger directs his attention to the military command camp, where General Friedrich (Devid Striesow) wants to continue the war, or to the diplomatic talks about an end to hostilities in a railway carriage near Compiègne in France. But even while you watch the German negotiator Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl) as he literally smashes to pieces on his tough opponent from the Allies, one thing remains clear: the wounded, maimed and dead continue to pile up on the battlefields outside.
Because of course the horrors of war that Bäumer and his comrades experience are also the focus of Berger’s film adaptation. Here again the director stays close to his protagonists. He does not focus on drawing the great battle picture, but rather brings individual suffering and terror to the fore. For example, he almost completely ignores the topic of the poison gas war. For example, the scene described by Remarque, in which Bäumer lies in a hopper with a slowly dying Frenchman, is given eleven intense minutes of space.
Aside from Striesow and Brühl, the film has an only moderately well-known cast. The fact that there is no overflowing star cast distracts from the immersion in the story is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. The spearhead is the Austrian Felix Kammerer in the leading role of Paul Bäumer. For the 27-year-old, who works at the Vienna Burgtheater, among other things, it is his feature film debut.
And that’s just as impressive as the film itself, which manages to keep the viewer uneasy in their seats for almost two and a half hours. The interplay between James Friend’s intensive use of the camera and Volker Bertelmann’s deliberately unsettling film music also contributes to this. All in all, the German reinterpretation of “Nothing New in the West” is a convincing anti-war film that doesn’t need to hide from previous versions. It is not without reason that the film will be the German contribution to the upcoming Oscars.
Although this story revolves around a conflict that is now more than 100 years old, it seems more relevant than ever against the background of the Ukraine war. A war of aggression that was forced on the defending Ukraine and from which there seems to be only one military way out at the moment. The message that “Nothing New in the West” sends and underpins Berger’s film is nevertheless important and right for all time: in the end, wars only know losers on all sides.
“Nothing New in the West” is now in German cinemas and will be available on Netflix from October 28th.
