All Quiet on the Western Front
So today I went into Melbourne town to go to the German consulate and apply for a German passport, which seems to have been successful, then I met up with my Ecuadorian friend Michelle in an eastern suburb (Michem?); and then I found that the theatre that was showing the new All Quiet on the Western Front was at that point on my way home! So I decided to go see it.
Got off the train in this suburb called Hawthorne that questionmark was just beside a university? Anyway leaving the train station one proceeds immediately into a cute laneway full of little shops and then the street outside was also full of cute little shops. The cinema seemed to be possibly an independant one, specializing in indie films and stuff. It appeared to have a full bar and coffee-bar in the waiting area.
Anyway, on to the movie. I had seen the next-most-recent All Quiet on the Western Front (which I guess must have been the 1979 version?) as well as read the book in I think my junior year of high school so like 23 years ago. So the memories I'm comparing to this one to are a bit faded.
This version had some great cinematography. And they did some clever things such as, it starts with fighting in the trenches, we see a soldier afraid to go up over to make the attack but finally he does and we see all the typical craziness of no man's land, and then we see the dead being collected, and their uniforms and boots being stripped off of them, then we see cartloads of bloody uniforms being cleaned, and repaired, and then we go to the actual protagonist of the film, Paul as a just-graduated schoolboy signing up to join the army with his friends, he receives a uniform, it has the name of the soldier we saw at the beginning on it still.
What I didn't like about this version compared to what I remember of the last one is they tried to give it more of a plot, which I think actually took away from the point of the film. In the 1979 version, like in the book, the "plot" is mainly just that war is hell and we see the protagonist experience the war until he (spoiler alert) dies. And the story as written does a great job of carrying this to its conclusion. In this version they introduced a parallel storyline of the guy trying to negotiate the armistice, and by cutting between that and the protagonist they kind of make it seem like a race against time -- which, I can see why they thought that might be a good idea but I think it just cheapens the story as originally written. It takes attention off Paul's perspective and kind of eliminates what would be a more "this is never going to end" feel you'd have without it. Another similar decision they made is they also cut to the general or field marshall commanding Paul's area frequently, and he's eating a lavish meal with elegant settings nearly every time he's seen -- he's pointedly not once portrayed being out among the troops or doing anything militarily useful, but he does frequently speechify about how he doesn't want piece because he wants to win glory like his forefathers. I think this also really cheapened the film, in waht is otherwise a very serious film this character comes off like a comic book villian. His comments about how the peacemakers are betraying them did foreshadow the rise of nazism which was nice but the whole thing was too heavy handed. Also when he orders his troops to attack in the literal last fifteen minutes of the war, I couldn't help but be aware that while I've seen no record of the Germans doing so, the AMERICANS were noted to have done that -- having arrived late to the war there _were_ reportly American commanders who were so overeager to win some glory that they pushed futile assaults up until the minute of the armistice (see also, in the book / prev movie, Paul dies a month before the armistice, this one in their wholly unnecessary attempt to increase the tension has Paul die at the minute of the armistice).
So altogether I enjoyed it though I think it would have been better if they had just had faith that the story as originally written didn't need to be hollywooded up. Ii give it a B+ If you're a connoisseur of war movies definitely give it a watch when it comes out on netflix later this month.