All Quiet On The Western Front Takes Aim At Oscar Gold

All Quiet On The Western Front doesn’t have an easy path to victory, which is rather poetic.

There are plenty of precedents for remakes to hit the Best Picture nominations list. Still, the track record for success isn’t very deep, especially considering that the 1930s version took home the Best Picture equivalent at the 1931 Oscars. Adding more to the pile, this is a non-English language film. Again, there’s a prescedent with very little success.

If I’m starting with a Debbie Downer list like this, you might think it will get worse from here. Hopefully not. Let’s chalk this up to being a byproduct of the somber tones running through the movie.

All Quiet is not a typical war movie. Don’t expect to find yourself watching a young boy triumph as we did in 1917 (2019). Don’t be surprised to see this categorized as an anti-war film. We’re on the losing side. There are no heroes. Victory only appears in food and other small trinkets from a life outside of the war machine. It even goes so far as to make politicians appear moderately sympathetic, at least on the German side.

I have read enough to know this version strays from the book of the same name. I’ll admit I have yet to see any of the other iterations of All Quiet On The Western Front. So I can’t say if this latest version is a fresh take or rehashing an already covered storyline. But I found this to be an engaging watch.

Some of the critiques leveled at All Quiet is that it covers nothing new. Given that war films have been the movie industry’s bread and butter for quite a long time, any filmmaker would be hard-pressed to find ground that has yet to be tread. It would, at this point, be an exercise in futility to expect to find brand-new territory in the genre. In recycling the themes from earlier iterations, the filmmaker imbues the story with the au courant, modern perspective.

Others have pointed out the film’s lack of human emotion. I didn’t get that from All Quiet. Yes, the characters were detached. But given where they were and what they were doing, their remoteness was the only way to survive emotionally.

Saving Private Ryan has characters blatantly point out this to the audience through the discussion of the character played by Barry Pepper’s ability to sleep soundly despite having the most kills. In this film, we get a different type of exposition. Here we see it in many shots during the various battle scenes of Paul’s face, usually covered in mud or other battleground detritus. His face is slack. His eyes aren’t following any particular action. He is just present.

The 2-hour 23-minute runtime felt a bit long. But I couldn’t say what could have hit the cutting room floor. With many nominees being over 2 hours 30 minutes, maybe it was just me.

Especially since, if there had been further edits, they likely would have come from the non-battle scenes. That would be a tragedy. I’ve complained other nominees didn’t make me care for their characters. All Quiet does a fantastic job of investing the audience in the lives of its ensemble cast. Every death hit home.

Do I think this will overcome all odds stacked against All Quiet on the Western Front and take the Best Picture Oscar? No. Probably not. But unlike the other nominees who don’t have a huge chance of winning in this category, All Quiet has the added nomination in the Best International Film category.

Could it win there?

Since this is the Slacker’s Guide to the Oscars, I haven’t really had a chance to look into that category, let alone watch any of the nominees, so I can’t give an educated answer. Still, All Quiet on the Western Front could go the way of Life is Beautiful in 1997.

But those are my thoughts…what are yours? Comment below.