‘All Quiet on the Western Front’: A German retelling for a modern time
War was sold to a young Paul Bäumer as a romantic ideal.
Spurred by a patriotic teacher, he volunteers to join his fellow classmates – mere boys – on the front lines of a war that quickly manifests as anything but aspirational. The protagonist of “All Quiet on the Western Front” battles hunger, grieves lost classmates, and charges the World War I battlefield with little apparent training, all while wearing a uniform his German chain of command had recycled off a dead soldier’s body.
It’s Netflix’s version of the global bestselling 1929 war novel – “Im Westen nichts Neues” – that the Nazis famously considered a threat. Before the Nazis seized power, their master propagandist Joseph Goebbels even orchestrated a riot at the 1930 Berlin premiere of the Hollywood film version.
The 2022 release is the third film based on the novel, but
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