All Quiet on the Western Front getting rave reviews out of TIFF

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War is a horrific, futile waste of human life. This is the basic message of Edward Berger's "All Quiet on the Western Front," a war film based on the 1928 German novel of the same name. The film, which had its world premiere at the 2022 Toronto International Film Festival, is a powerful condemnation of warfare, presenting audiences with a grueling, wretched depiction of the physical, financial, and psychological toll that The Great War had on the German people. Rather than portray its characters as glorious heroes bravely fighting for their country, or even ending the film on an optimistic note, "All Quiet on the Western Front" is tragic from beginning to end, and is relentlessly, almost unbearably, bleak.

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The original novel, written by Erich Maria Remarque, was a huge hit internationally. It was adapted by universal in 1930 for the highly acclaimed war epic "All Quiet on the Western Front." Berger's film follows the same basic beats as the pre-code film, but is updated for contemporary audiences with awe-inspiring visuals, a haunting, industrial score, and much, much more violence. This is not a film for the weak of heart: Just watching the intense bloodshed and suffering playing out on the big screen is enough to give anyone nightmares. What's even more distressing, though, is remembering how many people actually lived through that. For however grueling the characters' plight appears, most of us will never fully understand what life in the trenches was actually like.

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