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dweemeister · 1 year

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All Quiet on the Western Front (2022, Germany)

As a film buff, I retain a preference to reading a book first before seeing its adaptation. But with how many movies I see in a year – sometimes not realizing that a movie is a literary adaptation before starting it – and given how many original source materials are out-of-print or little-read (let alone how slow a reader I am), this is often too difficult a proposition. I make an attempt, however possible, to learn about the themes of an adapted book I was not able to read before heading into a film write-up. Strict fidelity to the text is not a requirement; yet a film adaptation should adhere to the spirit of the text. Any significant changes to that requires the change be done with artistic intelligence and sensitivity. Especially when the adapted book in question is significant in a peoples’ or a nation’s consciousness. Published in 1929, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is a landmark novel in anti-war literature and remains – for its depiction of World War I on the bodies and minds of the young men sent to fight it – an important part of modern Germany’s sociopolitical identity.

Lewis Milestone’s 1930 film adaptation at Universal with Lew Ayres was the first cinematic masterpiece following the introduction of synchronized sound and the era of the silent film. Now steps in Edward Berger’s German-language adaptation for Netflix, starring Felix Kammerer, in hopes of reminding viewers that Im Westen nichts Neues (roughly “Nothing New in the West”) is, despite its universal appeal, fundamentally a German story. Berger’s All Quiet is a stupendous technical masterpiece – harrowing visual and sound effects, overflowing with blood and mud. It is among the most technically accomplished war movies this side of Saving Private Ryan (1998). Along the way, Berger’s All Quiet tries for too much, and betrays the characterizations and the intent of Remarque’s novel. With some of its violent scenes shot too aesthetically pleasing alongside an offensive and disrespectful electronic score, 2022’s All Quiet casts the French civilians and soldiers as “the enemy” rather than fellow victims. It veers perilously close to fetishizing the violence within.

Before a brief synopsis, it seems appropriate to reproduce Remarque’s epigraph to All Quiet on the Western Front here:

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

It is 1917, and the Great War has been plodding along for three years. Along with his friends Ludwig Behm (Adrian Grünewald), Albert Kropp (Aaron Hilmer), and Franz Müller (Koritz Klaus), student Paul Bäumer (Kammerer) enlists in the Imperial German Army. They all receive uniforms that, unbeknownst to them, belonged to German soldiers killed in action. Skipping almost entirely over basic training, Paul and his friends deploy to the Western Front, on the French side of the Belgium/France border. There, they befriend Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky (Albrecht Schuch) and Tjaden Stackfleet (Edin Hasanovic), who are several years older and have been fighting since close to the war’s beginning. These young men muddle on in drenched trenches, freezing weather, and their comrades’ horrific deaths. Parallel to the plight of Paul and his fellow soldiers is German politician Matthias Erzberger (Daniel Brühl), who secretly travels by train to the Forest of Compiègne to negotiate with French General Ferdinand Foch (Thibault de Montalembert) an armistice.

Also featuring in this film are Devid Striesow as the so-villainous-he-must-be-a-moustache-twirler General Friedrichs, as well as Andreas Döhler and Sebastian Hülk as two German officers.

This All Quiet on the Western Front occasionally frames its violent scenes as too painterly, the combat infrequently choreographed too closely to action movies (e.g., 2017’s Dunkirk is sometimes more of a suspense movie than it is a war movie and Sam Mendes’ 1917 from 2019 is an aesthetic challenge and action movie first, war film second). The opening moments are a dolly shot that linger over a patchwork of corpses strewn about No Man’s Land, with the dull rattle of machine gun fire occasionally disturbing the soil. There is an almost gawking approach to how cinematographer James Friend hovers over the bodies. One character’s death is shrouded in a blinding angelic light – applying too picturesque a technique for a non-fantastical moment. Some exceptions to this voyeuristic, perhaps fetishistic approach to framing warfare appears, including the frightening emergence of French tanks through a cloud of gas. Berger succeeds in displaying war for all its brutality. The film’s sheen, however, comes off as too aggressive and its camerawork reflecting a Netflix-esque polish.

The most glaring misstep from the screenplay by Berger, Ian Stokell, and Lesley Paterson is to include any perspectives not involving Paul and his most immediate comrades. Depicting the insights of Erzberger, Foch, and the fictional General Friedrichs removes one of the central pillars of why All Quiet on the Western Front was such a revolutionary piece of literature. Remarque’s novel, at a time when “anti-war” narrative art was in its infancy, was one of the first war narratives that concentrated entirely on common soldiers – not the officers that commanded them or the politicians that guided them.

Before focusing on Paul and his friends, let us get the officers and politicians out of the way first. The insertion of the armistice negotiations and Gen. Friedrichs’ beliefs over politicians selling the Germany army out – more on this fiction shortly – stunts Paul and his friends’ respective character growths. And despite a decent performance from Brühl, these scenes (except for the final time the elite appear) play out repetitively: Erzberger pleads to Foch for a ceasefire, Foch demands a conditional surrender that will heavily punish Germany, and Erzberger mulls over the terms of surrender. This is all distracting from the common soldiers’ experiences, and provides as much cinematic or educational value as an amateur historical reenactment.

Berger’s stated justification for including these scenes – and letting them drag on too long in the film’s second half – is reasonable. Over the last decade, the actions of far right political groups in Germany have become more visible. These contemporary groups espouse the myths that some in 1920s and ‘30s Germany used to justify the nation’s actions leading up to World War II – all which monolithized and exploited German WWI trauma to serve repugnant purposes. The emotional imbalance of the Erzberger*/Foch scenes paints France and the Allies as an unforgiving “other”, as well as the war’s eventual “victors” (the Allies did prevail in WWI, but Remarque sees no winners in warfare). For a work never meant to be an accusation and written in between the World Wars, the proto-fascist Gen. Friedrichs spits out an early form of the stab-in-the-back conspiracy theory‡. His behavior and appearance, eerily reminiscent of Allied propaganda of Germans as “the Hun”, casts him as the film’s obvious villain. These decisions all provide Berger’s All Quiet with a juxtaposition of morality more appropriate in a WWII movie than one for the Great War.

Beyond the implications of historical morality, Berger, Stokell, and Paterson’s screenplay undermines, at almost every juncture, Remarque’s critiques of the nationalism that began World War I. The decision to have Paul and his friends join the military in 1917 rather than 1914 (as it is in the book) makes it more difficult to have Paul and his friends to have conversations about the nature and the origins of this war. Instead, the screenplay keeps such dialogue to a minimum. As a result, Berger relies on cinematographer James Friend (in his first motion picture of note) to show us close-ups of Paul’s face to reveal his thoughts. In his film debut, Felix Kammerer is doing all he can with his facial and physical acting, but after a certain point this take on Paul results in him being an empty vessel.

Indeed, in Remarque’s book, Paul Bäumer is very much a reactive rather than proactive character. But that does not mean he is without deep introspection, as he is in this 2022 adaptation. Rather than someone who slowly realizes the nationalistic folly of WWI (“We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see.”), muses on how wars begin, and is anything but resigned to war’s inevitability, Kammerer’s Paul emotes and says nothing about these aspects of the war. Any critique from nationalism comes not from Paul in this adaptation, but from Gen. Friedrichs’ cartoonishly villainous behavior and Paul’s teachers in the film’s opening minutes. Paul and his friends are no battlefield geniuses, nor are they intellectuals. But the monotony of war – in the absence and presence of violence – grants them knowledge no classroom can give, wisdom that no elder can impart.

Berger, Stokell, and Paterson have the gall to delete entirely arguably the most critical passage in the book: Paul’s return home after being granted time for rest and recreation. After a lengthy spell fighting in the trenches, Paul’s leave completes his development as a naïve and adventure-seeking student to a detached, disillusioned man. Nationalism manipulates his father and others – mostly older men – into believing the justness of the conflict, that serving one’s country in warfare is glorious.

By contrast, Lewis Milestone’s 1930 adaptation takes Paul’s reunion with his teacher a step further than the book. In that version, instead of a chance encounter at a parade ground, Paul visits his teacher during class, with his newest students a rapt audience. The scene that follows is not subtle. But in the context of Milestone’s adaptation, the film earns it. As Paul, Lew Ayres refuses to gift his former teacher the heroic narrative he requests – paraphrasing Horace, decrying nationalism, and simply stating: “We try not to be killed; sometimes we are. That’s all.” One figures these are the words, delivered in sullen fury, by WWI’s veterans. Berger’s adaptation again leans too heavily on Kammerer to relate any semblance of the above ideas. There is no analogue scene to juxtapose the behavioral and psychological differences between battlefront and homefront, no character or even a faraway figure for Paul to verbally challenge. Kammerer’s Paul does undergo a behavioral and cognitive shift by the conclusion of 2022’s All Quiet. Yet, his transformation is not nearly as dramatic as the narrative needs it to be. These failures all stem from a screenplay that might as well have been titled something else. It is damningly incurious about Paul and his friends.

Major movie studio film scores are moving in a particular direction: amelodic, electronic, experimental, metallic, and minimalistic. It seems, by how awards voting bodies and audiences are reacting to such music, what I am about to write paints me more of an outlier than ever.

Composer Volker Bertelmann (also known as his stage name Hauschka; 2016’s Lion) concocts an anachronistic score that includes all these elements. Devoid entirely of recognizable melody (droning strings), Bertelmann’s score has one repetitive three-note idea – I refuse to call this a motif, as it lacks any sense of development from its first to final appearances – that damages and dominates the movie. Inserted in strangely timed moments and meant to intensify dread, Bertelmann’s idea begins from the root note (B♭), up a minor third (D♭), then descends a minor sixth (F). Bertelmann plays these three notes fortissimo, with synthesizer mimicking blaring brass – trust me, you know the sound and you may know its worst practitioners. When recurring underneath the strings, the idea modulates. Memorable as it may be, this metallic sound is more appropriate for hyping young men before a battle or at a rave rather than suggesting dread. Even worse: this is disruptive music. There is a healthy balance to when music should or should not accompany the imagery onscreen. One should notice music in a movie, and it should empower – but not completely overshadow – the emotions and ideas in respect to a certain scene. Bertelmann’s interruptions appear mostly in calms before the proverbial storms. These are the moments the characters and the audience should collect themselves before the killing restarts. Thus, his three-note idea abuses and instantly overstays its welcome.

Is there a place for such colorless, obnoxious, and offensively manipulative music in film? Certainly. Just not in anything entitled All Quiet on the Western Front.

On its surface, a German-language film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front would restore a cultural and linguistic authenticity to Remarque’s text, one of the most important literary works in German history. To some extent, Berger succeeds. His All Quiet is a technical wonder, but its human interest is nil. Remarque’s prose is not the most accomplished, but his subjective descriptions of trench warfare and his characters’ philosophizing in moments of boredom and quiet were unlike anything almost any Western reader ever encountered. We, the readers, grow alongside Paul and his friends. In 1930, the viewers saw a small group of friends – Milestone’s adaptation is unique in that Paul does not truly emerge as the main character until halfway through the film – see their youth and optimism pummeled away with each shelling and charge. A humanity remains, but tenuously. Berger’s adaptation treads an easier path by inserting a reenactment of the armistice negotiations and expediting Paul’s characterization by immediately dismantling his inwardness and sense of hope.

As a document of a generation’s experiences, a critique of that era’s nationalism that led to the conflict, and a common soldier’s processing of the war’s origin and purpose, this is a poor adaptation of Remarque’s novel. It clears the hurdle in anti-war narratives by decrying warfare as ugly. Beyond this basic expectation, it accomplishes little else.

My rating: 6/10

* Erzberger was assassinated by the far-right terrorist organization Organisation Consul (OC) in 1921. The group was disbanded the year after, but its former members were absorbed into the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel (SS).

‡ This conspiracy theory was primarily associated with Jews, but the Nazis also extended it to the political elite that negotiated the surrender. And as if it weren’t obvious enough, one of our German characters is stabbed in the back in the film’s concluding minutes.

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

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sinceileftyoublog · 1 year

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Colin Stetson Interview: The Enticing and Inviting Score for The Menu

BY JORDAN MAINZER

John Williams. Hans Zimmer. Howard Shore. These are some of the few heavy-hitters you associate with film scoring, especially around awards season. For horror films, you usually think of folks like John Carpenter or Dario Argento. But over the last half-decade, a rash of electronic or avant-garde classical producers and musicians have made names for themselves as in-demand movie composers. Two of the nominated composers for the Oscar for Best Original Score this year are experimental band Son Lux (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Hauschka’s Volker Bertelmann (All Quiet on the Western Front). And since 2018, in-demand horror director Ari Aster has employed the unmistakable stylings of instrumentalists and electronica masters for his first three films, Hereditary, Midsommar, and the upcoming Beau Is Afraid. It’s saxophonist Colin Stetson, who we’ve covered many times live, reviewed, and interviewed, who offered his talents to Hereditary, the film that essentially broke him out as an accomplished film composer, and the name you think of when thinking about a new wave of leftfield film scorers.

The latest film to take advantage of Stetson’s compositional prowess is Mark Mylod’s comedy horror satire The Menu, released in theaters late last year and currently streaming on HBO Max. About an inter-connected group of diners traveling to an exclusive restaurant operated by a celebrity chef (Ralph Fiennes), the film’s sort of a cross between Midsommar and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out films. Like Hereditary, the frames and the sounds on The Menu are inseparable once you’ve seen the film; that is, listening to Stetson’s original soundtrack, though it is its own piece of music, you can’t help but see the faces of Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, and Hong Chau and remember the biting, horrific events that unfold in the film. It’s also another unique entry in Stetson’s ever-growing oeuvre, its palate based in orchestration and string instruments like violin, viola, cello, bass, mandolin, and nyckelharpa, along with the usual saxophone as well as Tibetan bowls, piano, and choral vocals. Sax arpeggios and pizzicato strings, including plucked piano strings, helped Stetson achieve the ultimate contrast of light and dark, beauty and harshness that pervades each frame of the film and its overall arc and mood.

I spoke with Stetson late last fall over Zoom from Montreal about The Menu, his score approach and process, coming up with soundtrack track titles, and how composing for film compares with making solo studio albums. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Image courtesy of Milan Records

Since I Left You: Was there anything unique about your approach to your score for The Menu in comparison to your approach to other scores you’ve done?

Colin Stetson: This one was certainly the most decidedly rhythmic at its core. So much of the bones of it is bounded in a very crisscrossing, rhythmic scaffolding, this thing that can be fun, light, and prancing at times, and also incredibly tense and driving and static.

SILY: I noticed the rhythms when listening to the first track and first single, “All Aboard”. Why did you choose “All Aboard” as the first taste of this soundtrack, in terms of it being track 1 and the first piece of music revealed?

CS: It’s a good one in terms of the first taste of something in this story. It’s the first music that happens in the film, within a minute or so of the beginning of the film, and it sets the stage so much for what happens later. A lot of the themes that are more or less weaving through all of the rest of the film start out here, in more or less innoucuous ways. They’re cloaked in a delightful sheen to entice and invite rather than forebode. I liked the idea that it would be the same opening invitation to the music as well.

SILY: When you score films, do you think about the scores as eventual standalone pieces of music, the soundtrack?

CS: Not first and foremost. I am very aware that--and this is a little more process and functional--for my initial reactions, I'm usually crafting music to picture. There’s always things from the first cut that are going to change. In many instances, on the soundtrack album, I will use my initial cue [of music] rather than what it may get edited into down the line. What ends up being manipulated on picture, in my opinion, is now standing up and propping a picture, but it might not stand on its own in a musical context. I’m aware that sometimes there are changes made to music outside of my control, outside of anything that will end up on a record. [What’s on the record are] my cuts, for lack of a better term.

SILY: Even when you’re not making music for a film, do you find yourself, in the process of musicmaking, being inspired by imagery or having images showing in the background when recording?

CS: Absolutely. It’s one of the things that’s been ever-present in my solo music, namely, and across the board for me. It’s all world-building and storytelling, very truthfully. Virtually all of the music I’ve made, the way I make it, there’s a corollary narrative structure. Imagery is something that for me informs the arc of an overall album. I’m not just making collections of songs, and those songs aren’t just collections of parts and sounds. There’s more of a thoughtful intent baked into every bit of it.

SILY: With regard to your use of vocals on the score for The Menu, did you have any newfound inspirations or intentions?

CS: There was always going to be this element of the sacred, the revelatory, the worshipful aspect to all of it. Wrapped up in the main character of the chef is a very profound love for the subject matter and craft. It felt apt for that to be represented by vocals, especially as the film neared its climax.

SILY: Is coming up with track titles for the soundtrack as simple as taking a cue from what’s happening in the movie? Are they difficult to mull over?

CS: Not really. Some of them are quite obviously what they were on a cue sheet. “Taco Tuesday” was the cue all along. Did I think of possibly changing that? Yeah, but when was the next time I was going to have the option of naming a song “Taco Tuesday”? It ties intrinsically to the film and doesn’t give anything inherent away, and it’s certainly not lofty. The track sheet, when you see it on the back of the album, there are aspects that ultimately tie in with the arc of the film’s story. I like to have some of the titles be rooted and reflected in that. Sometimes, I take it from dialogue and try to boil it down to an essence of what it is that scene is doing. Others are a little bit more esoteric. It’s not like album titles on a record of mine. Those are usually a lot more exhaustive, because ultimately, the score has its story. It has its narrative. All these cues were written for picture, for themes happening in the film. When I’m making my own solo record, the narrative and the language used is coming from a world nobody gets to see except for me. I do tend to take a different tact with that titling in comparison to soundtrack titling.

SILY: “The First Cheeseburger You Ever Ate” will also never be a Colin Stetson title.

CS: Absolutely not, but at the same time, it ties it to the film and is representative of a bigger idea in peoples’ personal experiences. That piece of music is the most loving, beautiful, angelic, childlike. It’s embracing and getting back to basics and everything made anew. That title gets to be tied very concretely and nods to experiences we had.

SILY: How, over the years, have you grown as a composer?

CS: I’d like to think in most ways. [laughs] Certainly in terms of the process. I’ve learned how it is I like to work and have streamlined that process. With every job, [there’s] something new I haven’t opened up with before. By the end, I feel as though that toolbox and comfort zone has expanded. Compositionally, I’m more able to react to picture in ways that really serve it. I’m able to do more with less. I can always sit back, watch the finished product, and understand where things really work, work, and are fine. For those that are fine, you understand how to make it, on another offering, work. In this, as in everything, it’s all a path. I can adore the object after it’s made and still understand the things about it that I can learn from and improve in subsequent offerings. I am lucky in that I have a strong sense of love and admiration for the objects I make and an equally strong instinct for the self-critical. I can identify things I deem learning instances for improvement. It’s just a constant state of that with no real destination.

SILY: Have you ever done a live score to a film you’ve composed for? If not, would you consider it?

CS: There’s talk of that to come, so we’ll see. There’s certainly talk of presenting music from scores live. With luck, time, and effort, it will start to happen in the coming years.

SILY: What’s next for you in the short and long term?

CS: I’m working on another feature I can’t talk about yet. I’m in the midst of two solo records that will see the light of day in the next year. Uzumaki is finally coming out. There are numerous other things in the works, but those are the ones right on the precipice.

SILY: Are you making more Void Patrol music?

CS: There are certainly gonna be some shows. Who knows? I’m sure we’ll get up to something.

SILY: Do you tend to consume unrelated media when you’re writing or recording music?

CS: I expose myself to certain things when I’m working on certain things: You can’t help but be influenced by what it is you’re filling your head with. I try to shepherd my overall existence in particular ways when working, depending on the space I want to be in. I don’t know I’ve ever practiced in total abstinence. The years I did Hereditary, I didn’t watch horror or listen to anything in that genre. Certain things can be mired in trope that I like to stay away from. I have a permanent abstinence on the types of things that might lead one in a direction that’s a bit more heavily trod.

SILY: That said, is there anything you’ve been listening to, watching, or reading lately that’s caught your attention?

CS: I’ve read a book recently I did not enjoy, so I won’t talk about that one. [laughs] In the fall, I tend to get into a very re-ready space. I read two Jim Harrison books recently that I always enjoy, The River Swimmer and Returning to Earth. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by [Haruki] Murakami, which is my all-time favorite. Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars was fun, beautifully imagined sci-fi and reads like watching a movie. It’s visually very striking and almost popcorn in terms of how accessible and fun and encompassing it is. Similarly, Andy Weir’s Project Hail Mary was a cover-to-cover, fast, fun, effortless read.

Music-wise, I’m not coming up with anything new, so I’ll leave it at the books.

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