There’s been no shortage of war films recently, but one film, All Quiet on the Western Front, aims to stand above the crowd with gritty realism. Director Edward Berger spoke with Deadline about the movie, claiming he took a “reportage” approach to let the audience draw their own conclusions:

World War I is widely regarded as one of the most brutal conflicts of all time, so it’s necessary to depict its true horrors. The film is quite violent, and it needed to be to avoid “glorifying” the war, according to the director:

“The north star during the rewriting and during the planning of the movie was always the novel, which has a really interesting reportage feeling. We tried to find a mixture of styles, and first of all we tried to hit that tone by saying, “Let’s grab the audience by the collar and drag them through the mud, make them feel that they are there. Make it a really subjective, visceral experience.”

All Quiet on the Western Front takes a different approach to The Great War and is described as an “anti-war” film instead of just a “war” film. It illustrates the futility of the conflict as we watch the characters become jaded. There are no heroes, just young men losing their grip on humanity as they’re forced to kill each other.

“I felt it had to be pretty brutal, because anything that feels sort of glossed over would be untruthful and therefore propaganda, kind of glorifying it. And so I wanted to make it a physical, visceral experience, putting the audience right into it. Which includes violence… Sometimes you need to be able to turn away from a movie, to be repulsed by it. I don’t want you to watch the whole movie and just go, “OK.” You need to be physically attacked by the violence. You need to feel the impact of the violence.”

MOVIEWEB VIDEO OF THE DAY

Director Explains Why They Chose a Fresh Face for Paul Bäumer

     Netflix

While many films try to star a familiar face to get audiences interested, the director says that it was very important to cast relatively unknown actors for the film. The main character, Paul Bäumer, is played by Felix Kammerer in his first film role (although he has experience acting in stage productions). Edward Berger explains why the right casting was crucial:

All Quiet on the Western Front began streaming on Netflix on October 28th, 2022. It was directed by Edward Berger, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ian Stokell and Lesley Paterson. It stars Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl, and Sebastian Hülk. The film is based on the novel of the same name, written in 1929 by a German veteran of WWI. The novel was also previously adapted to film in 1930 and 1979.

“Casting and spending a lot of time on prep really guides the film and guides the camera. A lot of the work you do on set actually is done already in casting, if you pick the right people: you might think, “Well, that person interprets this character the way I see it,” or, “This person is so surprising. They’ve brought something new.” It was important that you hadn’t seen these actors before. They’re so iconic, these roles, that it was important that you should meet them with a certain innocence, that you don’t go, “Oh, I’ve seen them in Harry Potter…” I needed a new actor, a new face, to associate with Paul Bäumer. It’s such an iconic literary role. So that was important to me.”