Critics accuse film of straying too far from Erich-Maria Remarque’s much-loved 1928 anti-war novel
and shown on the streaming platform a month after its cinematic release, could in March become the first feature-length German production to win an Oscar since 2007’s The Lives of Others, accentuating a widening appeal of non-English language cinema.
Even the film’s title had lost its meaning, the newspaper complained. In keeping with its unsentimental narrative style, the novel ends on a laconic epilogue noting the narrator Paul Bäumer’s passing. “He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: all quiet on the western front.”
Süddeutsche suggested the film was above all a piece of “clever marketing” for a streaming platform eager to convert film prizes into new subscriptions. “148 minutes of blockbuster-compatible war kitsch is being slapped with a title that is internationally known and guarantees prestige and good sales. Maybe even an Oscar.”
Outside Germany, All Quiet on the Western Front has garnered mostly favourable reviews, with a 98% score on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. But German coverage has widely bemoaned a lack of emotional intimacy.
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