New Delhi: ‘All Quiet On The Western Front,’ a German historical drama, ruled BAFTAS 2023. The anti-war movie, inspired by the 1929 novel of the same name, received seven prizes, which include best film. It also won awards for best screenplay adaptation and best movie not in English. The prize for best director went to director Edward Berger. The non-English movie that has the most awards is presently World War One.
The old record was held by ‘Cinema Paradiso,’ a 1988 coming-of-age drama that won five prizes. However, the German movie has broken the record this time in number.
The winner – “All Quiet on the Western Front”
After the Hollywood adaptations of 1930 and 1979, Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war classic got its first German-language adaptation for the screen in 2022. It’s a strong, articulate, and morally impassioned picture from the director and co-writer Edward Berger. Felix Kammerer plays Paul, a German adolescent who joins up with his schoolmates in a foolish patriotic fervor near the conclusion of World War I, joyfully anticipating an easy, blustering march into Paris. However, he discovers himself in a bloodbath and mayhem nightmare.
How did it land up having a name – “All Quiet on the Western Front”?
For decades of British readers, the novel was a symmetrical complement to identical misery behind Allied lines, a book read alongside, for instance, Wilfred Owen’s poetry. Such an intertextual, reflective combination produced the depth of fiction insanity on which later anti-war works. The original German title, Im Westen Nichts Neues (“In the West Nothing New”), wonderfully translated as “all quiet on the Western Front” in 1929 by Australian translator Arthur Wheen, is a line from a true military report with a terrible irony- the western front is only silent because of the dead.
About the movie
All Quiet on the Western Front is a large, serious piece, acted with urgency and purpose, and with battlefield scenes skilfully merged into the action via digital fabrications. It never fails to do credit to its subject matter, despite the fact that it is presumably aware of its own classic status.
The film’s known soldier is Young Paul, the icon of innocence destroyed, his new openness stuffed in a blood-and-mud mask of terror. He is trapped in the agony of constant battlefields, which is all the more heartbreaking because it is nearing the conclusion of the war, and brainwashed German officials are approaching to sign the concession in the French railway carriage at Compiègne.
Where to watch the award-winning film?
All Quiet on the Western Front is currently available on Netflix. The movie was released on 14 October 2022 on the big-screens and it got released on the OTT platform – Netflix on 28 October, 2022.
