 Ooh, that's a hot mug, guys. Hey guys, this is my review for the Netflix film All Quiet on the Western Front. Most people of my generation would probably be accustomed to the book. Most of us had to read it in high school. I unfortunately did not. I was given snow foaming on cedars. I did listen to the audiobook version of it a couple of years ago, but my knowledge of it is a little bit hazy. If there are any kind of references I make about the book in the film, and I'm incorrect about that, I apologize. I'm gonna try and be as just straight up about the film as I can be. But the one thing that I do very clearly remember about the book, aside from the whole goose thing, I don't know why that always stuck out to me, is the utter bleakness of this book. I remember it did not sugarcoat anything. It did not talk about the camaraderie of war covering up all of the horror of it. The book didn't talk about the gratifications of victory or the rewards of defeating your opponents. No, this just talked about just how goddamn fucking shitty war is. And thankfully, the film does not either. The film follows a young fellow by the name of Paul who joins up with the German war effort with his friends towards the end of the war to go and enjoy and live the adventure. That ends probably within the first five minutes of them actually getting into any kind of conflict. I actually was quite impressed how quickly someone said they wanted to go home. This is exactly what I would have wanted out of a film based on this book. While the film doesn't exactly have the clearest narrative structure of which character is which and how the film progresses, it is just kind of a continuation of terrible events. There is this side plot that gives a lot more of a narrative direction that the book didn't really have. The book was kind of just an amalgamation of all these different terrible stories that happened during the war. Kind of similar to the Vietnam novel, The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, that book and All Quiet on the Western Front have similar kind of ideas of that. They are just snippets of the war, the shitty bits of it. The film, as I said, has a narrative structure that goes alongside with the book that does give it a little bit more construction and that is the talks, the peace talks that are happening. Played by Zimu, or Nicky Louder, as I like to refer to him in terms of the filmography. These high German officials are meeting with the French high officials to barter a surrender. They are trying to maintain some form of semblance and honor. All the while they're having the servings of food and wine and caviar and bread that the soldiers are literally fighting over, scrapping over to try and have a morsel of. So even while these guys are talking about the futility of this war and trying to save further lives from being lost, they are still very much at a touch with just the futility and the barbarism that they are putting these men into. Probably one of my favorite bits about the movie is how it opens. The opening scene of the battle scene on the No Man's Land, followed then by the clothes. What happens to the clothes of the fallen soldiers? How they get cleaned? How they get put back together again? There's not any faces really shown of these ladies who are doing the cloth cleaning or the knitting. Kind of just showing the soulless cog-like effect that everyone becomes in this war. Everyone's losing a part of their soul further and further along and these suits, these army outfits are just getting recycled. Now this film did have a few things obviously to contend with one of them being 1917, which came out a couple of years ago. And I will say that the director of this movie basically took all of the bits that Steven Spielberg's done for his war films, particularly of saving Private Ryan and then everything that Sam Mendez and Roger Deakins did in 1917 and they tried their best to do a mix of the two in terms of filmmaking. The production design of this film is incredible. That must be stated first and foremost. The set design, the amount of work these guys went into to recreate these battlefields is exemplary. Not just from the craters, not just from the wreckage, not just from the dead trees, but the puddles of blood, the puddles of tar, all of this awful shit that is just all over the battlefield. The costume design is very well done. I'm going to hope that it was all historically accurate. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that bit. A plus effort on the camera department. They do a lot of continuous shots, not obviously on the same level as Deakins, but they do do a bit. There is a lot of effort put into the dramatization of the visual style of this film and that has to be commended. But then again, if there is any kind of fault to have, it is the kind of lackluster continuity of the main character's story. There are moments where he has friends that just kind of disappear. It's not at the film's fault in terms of how they are introduced and how they are articulated in the story. It's because sometimes they're covered in so much shit and so much mud and blood that you can't tell who's who. And that's not a disservice on the film. Again, makeup department, hairstyle, all you guys did, an absolutely amazing job. There's one scene in particular where Paul and this French guy are fighting in this bunker, this bombed out, exploded hole. And the mud on Paul's face is so well done. It is a mixture of blood and mud and clay. Just amazing. Production design 100% gets an A plus from me. Absolutely not gonna deny that whatsoever. There's a score kind of in this movie. It's a lot of, but oddly enough, it works for its simplicity. It does help build in that complete lacking hope that this film is really articulating that absolute sense of dread and just despair and why the fuck am I still doing this kind of motion? I did enjoy that. I thought that was really well articulated in the film as well. I was kind of going into this film expecting it to be kind of like a pass at least. But no, the filmmakers, the actors, the production design, the special effects, every department that's in this film did a good job at just showing the bleakness. Now some people might not enjoy that too much. It's literally two and a half hours of bleakness, but at least there is structure here. There's a lot more structure in a narrative sense than there was in the book, at least from what I remember it being. It does have a little bit more of a flow to it that helps you keep you along the path that I felt the book was a little bit lacking, but I felt the book was designed that way. That's how it was written. This is just a little bit more of a narrative poll. Right up until the end, you're just gonna be in awe of what's happening in this movie. You're gonna be completely dumbfounded by what's going on and you're just gonna feel like a bag of shit by the end of it. So in the end, I am gonna give all quiet on the Western front a six out of seven. It is a very, very good movie. You should see it, you should see it, you should see it. Quite impressed with Netflix to have a film this good, especially just considering the caliber of what's going on with Netflix for the last while. But hey, you know what, I'll take a surprise. Those are my thoughts. What did you guys think about it? Have you seen the film? Are you gonna watch it? If there's anyone who has historical notes about it, whether like both the film parts that the film got really accurate and any that it might have gotten wrong are a little bit out of place, please let me know, I'd love to hear it. Anyways guys, that's all for me. I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did leave a like and if you're interested in more, subscribe. Until then, see you guys next time.