{"id":25605,"date":"2023-03-23T13:22:40","date_gmt":"2023-03-23T20:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=25605"},"modified":"2023-03-23T13:22:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-23T20:22:42","slug":"all-quiet-on-the-western-front","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2023\/03\/23\/all-quiet-on-the-western-front\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By DENNIS HARVEY<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

MARCH 21, 2023 (48hills.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the Oscars seem to be getting more international\u2014perhaps because Hollywood itself produces so few award-worthy movies these days\u2014a sign of the times was that the annual evening\u2019s second-most-laureled title was a German language feature. All Quiet on the Western Front<\/strong> ultimately lost the Best Picture award to Everything Everywhere All At Once<\/em>, the event\u2019s big winner, but for a while there it looked likely to clean up all night. It was surprising, given that it was a non-US film without English dialogue and big-name stars, and which had largely bypassed theaters for the major studios\u2019 nemesis, Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It did have an Academy pedigree of sorts: The first screen version of Erich Maria Remarque\u2019s celebrated novel, duly shot on Universal Studios\u2019 sound stages in the Hollywood hills, was one of the very first Best Picture winners almost a century ago. Ironically, the German author would soon find himself and his most famous work banned at home for the supposedly \u201cunpatriotic\u201d nature of their anti-war stances throughout the Third Reich. (He fled to Switzerland, where he would spend most of his remaining life.) Even after the war, many Germans considered him a \u201ctraitor.\u201d So it may seem odd that the new version has found least critical favor in Germany, where it\u2019s been picked at for deviations from the book, and being too 21st-century blockbuster in overpowering style.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, from this writer\u2019s view, it\u2019s one of the best combat-focused cinematic depictions of war in years, if not ever, and its main flaw was simply having to be viewed at home\u2014few movies of substance released last year merited the \u201cbig screen\u201d so fully in terms of engulfing audiovisual expansiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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