Germany, the defeated country in two world wars, remade an anti-war film - "No War on the Western Front" (2022 version), to run for the Oscar.
No War on the Western Front is a fictional novel written by the German writer Erich Remarque (hereinafter referred to as "Remarque") based on his participation in World War I, serialized in newspapers in 1928 and published in 1929.
Since its release '94, No War on the Western Front has been put on the screen three times, after the 1930 and 1979 versions. The first two were filmed with the participation of the United States, and the 1930 version was the third Oscar for Best Picture.
Posters for the 1930, 1979, and 2022 editions of "No War on the Western Front"
Now, in 2022, remaking an Oscar-winning work and sending it to the Oscar is a bit strange, but it also confirms the unparalleled status of "No War on the Western Front" in art history
It is one of the most influential war stories in the world. Remarque said he was simply documenting the experiences of the next generation, writing about the suffering of an ordinary soldier and then throwing the soldier's confusion to the viewer: Why did war happen? What is the significance? Is it worth it?
This time, the director is German director Eduard Borg, who said that he grew up watching war films made by Americans and Britons, and in the victor's narrative, the war was shrouded in heroism and romanticism.
Edward Borg
But, as Germans, "there is no pride in speaking of the two world wars, only shame, guilt, horror and a sense of responsibility for history." Borg wanted to extract this sentiment from the memory of the German nation and make it into a special war film that belonged to the Germans.
Therefore, "No War on the Western Front" in 2022 is not only a simple remake of the classic movie. Told in the present, there is a deep meaning.
Verdun "meat grinder"
"No War on the Western Front" has excellent "anti-war character" because it truly and sharply portrays the brutality of the Western Front battlefield in Europe during World War I.
It's more like a thriller than a war movie.
The film begins with a mottled brown-gray land. The camera slowly zooms in, and people gradually see what the mottled on the ground is - the plants are all killed by the poisonous gas; Craters are the only remaining geomorphological features that can be vaguely identified; The remains of countless soldiers were embedded in the ground, like a touch on a huge oil painting.
A still from "No War on the Western Front (2022)"
The "Western Front" where the protagonist of the film "Paul" and his classmates went was located near the German-French border at that time. The range of operations extends from the North Sea to the Swiss border and is about 700 kilometers long.
This long front is made up of trenches, tunnels, shelters and barbed wire fences of the two warring sides. The trench system was stronger and more complete than ever, but it became a nightmare on the Western Front.
The advantages of trench warfare over defenders are obvious.
In the movie, as soon as the attacking soldiers jump out of the trenches and rush into the flat no-man's land between the positions, a rain of bullets comes at them. One by one, the crowd rushing forward fell, and countless soldiers died halfway before they could reach the enemy's trenches.
Without ups and downs and stirring feats, soldiers died one after another, stump hanging from branches and flesh and blood embedded in trenches. The rain on the Western European continent seems to never stop.
Such an attack is simply not called a battle, it is just going to death.
The audience can't spare the slightest effort to hope which side wins, but will keep praying, praying that this movie, this war, will soon usher in the end before more soldiers die.
One French pilot recalled that from the sky, the battlefield of Verdun after the rain resembled "the wet skin of a giant toad", which was physiologically disgusting.
During the Battle of Verdun alone, some 600,000 soldiers died. That battlefield, known as the "meat grinder" by later generations, was soaked in blood and water on every inch of the land.
The absurdity is that the sacrifice of 600,000 people was exchanged for almost zero combat gains - at the end of the Battle of Verdun, the positions of the German and French troops remained in place.
Judging by the results, it seems that the war never happened, which is one of the explanations of the title "No war on the Western Front". The fighting was fierce, the soldiers continued to charge and then die, but the situation of the confrontation between the two armies did not change significantly.
The Western Front was silent.
"The Battle of Love"
After World War I, the atrocities that drained a generation of young people in the belligerent countries left people in a deep confusion. This confusion has led to a series of great literary and artistic works, and "No War on the Western Front" is one of them.
The original author, Remarque, did not intend to create an "anti-war" novel. He was a first-hand witness of the First World War and was sent to the front at the age of 18. In the novel, he seems to narrate his own experiences through characters.
The book, he wrote, "is not an accusation, not a confession, much less an adventure... I'm just trying to describe a generation that was ruined by war – even if they dodged the shells."
War and art have always been closely related. However, historian Margaret Macmillan argues that World War I produced greater and more profound works than World War II – "probably because, for the anti-fascist camp, World War II was a battle that had to be fought." But World War I was increasingly seen as a war to be avoided. ”
World War I ruined a generation.
In wartime, human life is not even comparable to the continuous utilization of a piece of clothing. The uniforms on the bodies were stripped off, cleaned, mended and distributed to newly enlisted recruits.
The young men who received the uniforms were jubilant and sang in the queue.
They don't know what awaits them. No one knows what real war means.
War historian Hastings said, "There is not a war that is unpopular at the beginning. "At the beginning of World War I, in the countries participating in the warring in Europe, this impending military operation was strongly supported by the general public.
Governments are trying to convince their populations that they are innocent parties to the conflict. Germany claimed to be defending itself against Russian provocations, France and Britain said it was resisting German invasion, and Russia said it was defending Austria-Hungary and Germany. Politicians broadcast to the public through the mass media, hyping up the coming crisis.
A still from "No War on the Western Front (2022)"
Unfortunately, people believed.
In the movie, "Paul" and his classmates voluntarily signed up for the army in such social emotions. Listening to a speech by a teacher in the high school class, they were enthusiastic and excited.
But when he got to the battlefield, "Paul" stabbed a French soldier to death with his own hands in a crater, and when he watched a man gradually swallow in front of him, he was overwhelmed by shame and pain.
"Paul" tried to feed the dying French soldier water, cutting his front with a knife so that he could breathe more easily. A photo fell out. A woman and a little girl stand in front of a wall covered with ivy.
Someone was waiting for her husband and father to come home, but he was killed here by "Paul".
A still from "No War on the Western Front (2022)"
In that long, cruel, and senseless battle, many soldiers, like "Paul", developed a special affection with the enemy, almost sublimated into "love". Writer Scott Fitzgerald called the Battle of Verdun, in which 600,000 people died, "a battle of love."
In the documentary "They Are No Longer Old", a British soldier said: "As the war went on, I sympathized with the Germans as I sympathized with myself. "Some British troops became friends with captured German soldiers. They were surprised to find that, for some reason, "we were able to understand each other."
"The agreement we reached with the Germans was how useless war was and why it had to happen."
In the novel, "Paul" refers to the French soldier as a "comrade" and angrily says to the corpse: "Today is you." Tomorrow is me. But if I survive, comrades, I will fight to the end against everything that destroyed us. It ruins your life, and mine? It's also life. ”
A still from "No War on the Western Front (2022)"
The absurdity is that even if the soldiers on both sides knew that a new charge was meaningless, there was no reason for a French typesetter and a German shoemaker to kill each other – but they could not prevent their fate.
Art and reality
The novel "No War on the Western Front" was published in 1929, and the following year, a film of the same name was released. At this time, the end of World War I was only ten years away, and only nine years before the advent of World War II in Europe.
At that time, Remarque would not have known that after the publication of "No War on the Western Front", it evoked one social trend after another around the world. To this day, this fictional story still has a powerful force on the real world.
In "No War on the Western Front (1930)", when Paul returned home from vacation, he was invited by the teacher who had rushed himself to the battlefield to preach to the students, Paul told the tragic situation on the front line and his own personal experience, and was finally driven out of the classroom by the students as a "coward"
In the year of its publication, "No War on the Western Front" sold nearly 1 million copies in Germany. French translations, English translations, and even Chinese and Esperanto translations were published one after another, setting off a wave of war literature around the world.
"No War on the Western Front" pokes at a certain social mood. Failing economies, high unemployment, and acute conditions, Europeans blamed the confusion and hardship they felt at the time on the massive war of attrition a decade ago. The anti-war voice has never been stronger.
The scars of the past have not faded, and new banes have been buried. Born in such a special era background, "No War on the Western Front" triggered a widespread political crisis as soon as it came out.
This voice alarmed politicians. German political conservatives and fascists began denouncing it in the press, calling "No War on the Western Front" an "appalling slander and slander" against the German army.
A still from "No War on the Western Front (1930)"
In Britain, politicians began to worry that the popularity of No War on the Western Front was making the British public grieve over the war experienced by the Germans, "focusing so much on the enemy" that it ignored what happened to the allied countries in World War I.
In May 1930, the film of the same name shot in the United States was released, and the vortex of controversy went crazy out of control.
The film was about to be released in Germany, and a representative of the Ministry of Defense demanded that "No War on the Western Front" be banned on the grounds of "damaging Germany's image and slandering the German army". They believe that the film is a lie, and that the United States is using the media to carry out some kind of subtle and vicious propaganda against Germany that distorts the guilt of the war.
A still from "No War on the Western Front (1930)"
On the first day of the public screening of "No War on the Western Front" in Berlin, the Nazis bought three hundred tickets for the film and sat in theaters. When the film shows the scene of the German soldiers exhausted and ready to retreat, the Nazi Party in the audience began to chant: "German soldiers have courage, the movie insults people, what a shame!" ”
Someone jumped on the stage and began to speak. Someone threw stink bombs and rats on the stage, and the scene was chaotic. For several nights, demonstrations against film screenings continued on the streets of Berlin.
The Review Conference was forced to convene. In view of the social crisis caused by the film and the "possible mental harm to young Germans", "No War on the Western Front" was banned.
The absurdity is that novels and films have caused a series of storms in the real world, and different political discourses in German society have developed different interpretations of this story, in which the belligerent forces seem to finally prevail. It is brewing an even more terrifying conspiracy through its attack on "No War on the Western Front" and its ban.
A still from "No War on the Western Front (1930)"
Three years after the film's release, in 1933, Hitler came to power in the Third Reich. "No War on the Western Front" was banned and Remarque was threatened with his life and went into exile in Switzerland. Remarque's sister remained in Germany, was implicated in the work, and was executed by the Nazis.
Remarque died in Switzerland in 1970. The writer of anti-war novels did not wait for an answer, but twice in his life he witnessed the flames of war in his country.
In the movie, in the crater, a guilty and angry "Paul" lies on the corpse of a French soldier, begging the world that caused this tragedy for an explanation. He said indignantly: "I promise you, comrade-in-arms, that this will never happen again. ”
Today's film and television technology is so advanced, ultra-clear images and stereoscopic surround sound can give the audience unprecedented visual shock, making people immersive, as if standing with the protagonist "Paul" on the battlefield soaked in flesh and blood.
The shells fell and the blood mist rose. This is perhaps the closest thing people living in peace to war.
Why did the war happen? What is the significance? Is it worth it? Remarque and "Paul" did not wait for an answer.
Author | Xi You
Edit the | Wu Qing
New media editor| Monet
Typesetting | Eight pounds