Until today, All Quiet on the Western Front was the oldest book on my Goodreads to-read list (January 2016!). When the Netflix movie came out, I watched it in two sittings– it was long and, despite some very elaborate photography in some scenes, felt almost like a chore to finish. It seemed to me like the movie had captured an anti-war sentiment, much more than other movies on the Vietnam War for example, but a number of scenes still felt awkward.
After reading the review “Not Very Quiet on The Western Front,” I came to better understand why I had felt the way I did. Francis Babeuf’s review captured very well many of the movie’s problems: the timeline was out of place, and Paul’s experience was definitely not that of the average soldier. The movie compresses years into two weeks. However, Babeuf is very critical of the way the director of the new movie finished the story, and it is on this point that my opinion differs from his.
He claims that Paul’s death is a representation of the “stab in the back” myth (the Dolchstosslegende) that surrounds the end of WWI. When watching the movie, I never thought about the symbolism of Paul’s death, which happens fifteen seconds before the armistice takes effect. I was left thinking that Paul’s death was meaningless, and only happened because the military professional class of Germany only knows life through war and struggle. This was shown in the previous scene, where General Friedrichs has dinner with his aide, and mentions that is afraid that he will have no place in the new up-coming era. The officers belong to the past, yet they refuse to die. Looking at it this way, the person who stabs Paul in the back is neither the French soldier who actively does it to save his life, nor the socialists who stop the German war machine, but Friedrichs, who only really cares for his job and who is the clear antagonist of the movie, much more than war itself.
The socialists are good people, trying to bring an end to the senselessness. However, this reading, which I think captures the original intent of the movie’s director, also leaves a lot of knots untied. Nothing else is said about the general, leaving the door open for the Freikorps and later the Nazis to come along. And the movie also implies that many soldiers will return to ordinary life, and find it meaningless. Will they want to keep on fighting? Now we know that many turned to fascist organizations to find the brotherhood they missed. But none of this is in the movie- which means we have to be aware of the history of Weimar Germany to understand the ultimate fate of the characters. Which makes the ending even more unsatisfying, we are almost left waiting for the credits to end to see the rise of Hitler a la Marvel.
This finally pushed me to read the original book. At first glance, I do not think the ending there is much better. As it is a first person narrative, Paul is simply said to have died a day where all was quiet in the western front (hinting at a senseless death), after he was the last standing. His body was found smiling, almost glad to be gone. He is dispensed with in two paragraphs.
Everywhere else, reading the book makes it clear how the new film is a bad adaptation. Many scenes which are awkward in the film make much more sense in the book. The romance between the German soldier and the French peasant girl is a much more convoluted affair, which involves crossing into enemy lines, rather than a plot device which appears out of the blue. The scarf from the peasant girl roughly corresponds to a good pair of boots which members of Paul’s circle pass along, a bad substitute in my opinion. Albert’s suicide attempt with a fork happens in a hospital, and he survives it in the book. The death of Kat is also the final blow which throws Paul over the edge, but it happens very differently in the book: while fetching food, Kat is shot in two places, Paul only sees one, and carries him to the hospital half-dead where they notice a second head wound from shrapnel that kills him. There is no French child that shoots him after stealing from his father’s farm.
In addition to this, there are two extremely important scenes in the book which are missing from the film adaptation. Because of the compressed timeline, it would make no sense for Paul to take leave from the front: but he does so in the book as he has been fighting for two years. Paul returns to his hometown and it is there that the full trauma of soldierhood is exhibited. He is completely out of place, with a dying mother, and a father who tries to feel proud of him yet he abhors. He visits his dead friend’s mother to talk to her, and ends up lying to her about the friend’s death, making it much more peaceful than it was. By the end of that chapter he just wants to return to the front.
The second missing scene is one where the Kaiser visits the troops, and they express some sort of anti-war sentiment or incredulity as well as discussing the Kaiser’s humanity (yes, he also visits the latrine like they do). They repeatedly ask each other why they’re fighting the war, and they wonder why no one stopped it. Some soldiers even express incredulity that the Kaiser would want a war. This pointlessness of the war is later further driven into Paul (and us) when he kills the Frenchman in no man’s land, probably the best scene of the movie, and a faithful adaptation of the book. There are other missing scenes: a chapter about Paul and Albert’s stay at a hospital far from the lines, and the discussion of the conditions there. But I think this scene can be cut much easier than the other two.
Conversely, scenes with General Friedrichs (the film’s clear antagonist) are completely absent from the book. And this speaks about why All Quiet on the Western Front, while making a substantial emotional impact at first glance ends up being a bad movie after some thought. The original book has no clear antagonist, except war itself. It is ambiguous politically, but above all it is a soldier’s memoir. It makes no attempt to explain the end of the war, except through the crushing material superiority of the British and Americans in the last chapter. And Paul dies, just glad to leave this world, with no more friends and happy that he doesn’t have to return home. On the other hand, the movie loses this aspect, but has nothing to replace it. There are too many loose ends: war is personified through General Friedrichs, but there is also the bloodlust of the French child murdering Kat. The soldiers also mention that they will have trouble adapting to civilian life again. In the book this is brought to a close by having everyone, including Paul, die– but in the movie this is not closed.
Finally, good is presented through the socialist deputy who wants to avoid further deaths, and no mention is made of the mass uprisings that actually brought the war to a close. So, in the end, we are almost left expecting a sequel where all of this is resolved. Too many protagonists remain alive. So I must agree with Babeuf that the movie is completely unsatisfactory, and that reading the book has made this extremely clear.
-Renato Flores
