‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Film Review: A Beautiful, Horrifying New Take on Classic Anti-War Story

thewrap.com:

Endlessness might be the right word for viewers in 2022, given the conflicts that still wrack the globe more than 100 years after the events in this film.)“All Quiet on the Western Front” starts with the bucolic landscape of Western Europe in 1917; we know we’re in for carnage, but first we see hills and trees, clouds sitting in a pink-tinged sky, fog slipping through the woods.

It’s a technique Berger and his cinematographer James Friend return to again and again, deliberately placing their story in a world that would look like paradise if not for the blood squabbles of humans.And “All Quiet” doesn’t give us time to bask in that beauty; before long, we’re in a short, brutal battle, and then the ground is littered with dead bodies.

In a chilling sequence, soldiers strip the clothes off their dead comrades, leaving a pile of muddy, torn garments alongside the rows of black coffins.

The film follows the clothes, not the men, as they’re taken to a factory to be scrubbed, washed, mended and ultimately given to new recruits – one of whom, 17-year-old Paul Bauymer (newcomer Felix Kammerer), gets his new uniform, looks at the name tag and points out, “This already belongs to somebody.”“Yeah, it was too small for him,” lies the officer who’s inducting Paul.