The 95th Academy Awards for films released in 2022 were held on March 12, 2023. Unpopular changes like handing out awards for the technical categories before the start of the ceremony were done away with and this ceremony embraced that it would be long, to the betterment of the ceremony. There were no major incidents or controversies though, as ever, the In Memorium could have included more people. Highlights of the night included Ke Huy Quan’s win for Best Supporting Actor for Everything Everywhere All At Once, an appearance by the “real” Cocaine Bear, and the performance and win of “Naatu Naatu” for Best Original Song from the hyper-entertaining Indian film RRR. Host Jimmy Kimmel made several jokes about the previous year’s slapping incident between Will Smith and Chris Rock, but he took no low shots at the nominated movies. Recently the ceremony has taken an embarrassed, almost apologetic tone towards the nominated movies. This year felt like a real celebration of movies.
As awards season rolled along and Everything Everywhere All At Oncepicked up more and more accolades, it suffered the same minor problem as Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water in 2017 in that its frontrunner status made it the conventional choice, though the movie is far from conventional. So, many of its wins did not come as total surprises, however, this did not stop the excitement of this sci-fi multiverse martial arts movie winning a total of 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture. It is no overstatement to say that Everything Everywhere won big, picking up the most awards by a Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire at the 2008 Oscars. The impressive tally of wins include: Best Picture, Director, Actress-Michelle Yeoh, Supporting Actress-Jaime Lee Curtis, Supporting Actor-Ke Huy Quan, Original Screenplay, and Editing.
The flipside of Everything Everywhere winning big, along with the remake of All Quiet on the Western Front, which won 4 Oscars, is that films with multiple nominations like The Banshees of Inisherin (9), Elvis (8), The Fabelmans (7), and Tar (6) went home empty handed. Typically, the Academy spreads the wealth, but not this year.
Everything Everywhere is a fun and exciting choice for Best Picture, a nice change from the last couple years in which the Academy has awarded Best Picture to films that were good but not very daring. For me, the Best Picture nominees of 2022 were a mostly great selection of films and I was torn about which film would be my choice, if I had a vote, because for the first time in a long while not one but two of my absolute favorite films of the year were nominated for Best Picture. On my personal list of the best of 2022, Top Gun: Maverick and The Fabelmans are tied for first place, but if I can only award one…
There are scenes in Top Gun: Maverick that do not advance the plot but are important because they grow the characters. This is not done through dramatic monologues or speeches or cheap tricks but in intimate person to person moments. These moments feel honest; they add humanity into an action movie, something that is not strictly necessary but greatly enhances the movie. Jennifer Connolly’s character Penny is a great addition, a real challenge for Maverick, since flying comes so easy to him. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is close enough to the character you remember, but a lot of time has passed and the screenplay and Tom Cruise are not afraid to show us a different, mature version of a familiar character. The scenes of the F-18s in action will always dazzle and they are more than pure spectacle because of the work the cast and crew put into every aspect of the movie. It is difficult to blend action and emotion but, here, every thrill and every heartfelt moment are well earned. I can’t wait to watch it again.
The 2022 version of All Quiet on the Western Front is good enough to stand alongside the best anti-war films, but it will stand out because it is one of the still small number of movies about the First World War, and, most notably, it is German made. Published in 1929,Erich Maria Remarque’s now classic novel about an eager, patriotic German teenager experiencing the true horrors of war on the Western Front in Northern France, was first adapted by Universal Pictures the following year. That film, directed by Lewis Milestone, won Best Picture at the 3rd Academy Awards and remains one of the great anti-war films, with sights that still shock and scenes loaded with undated pathos. The novel and film ran afoul of the emerging Nazi party, who sabotaged screenings before both the novel and film were banned after they took power. Another version of All Quiet on the Western Front (there is also a surprisingly memorable made-for-TV version from 1979), seems unnecessary, but director Edward Berger uses modern cinematic styles and techniques, in addition to modern technology and visual effects, to create a harrowing and effective anti-war film.
Modernizations aside, the biggest difference between this version and the classic film and novel is the addition of scenes of the German High Command negotiating the armistice. Daniel Brühl plays real life German official Matthias Erzberger, who works to negotiate a quick armistice. He is not presented as heroic, but he is frustrated by the stubbornness of the German generals and the arrogance of the French generals, who understand that they are winning. While the politicians and generals quibble over words and protocol, teenage Paul, who joined the German army in spring of 1917 full of patriotic idealism, and his fellow soldiers are suffering and fighting and dying in mud and squalor, in conditions that before 1914 were unimaginable. The sharp and jarring juxtaposition of these scenes is intentional and highly effective. The First World War was called The Great War and The War To End All Wars because the methods of the war and conditions it created were so awful that, surely, there would be nothing after.
Berger’s film excels at something terrible, successfully conveying the horrors of modern industrial war: the grueling and terrible conditions of trench warfare; stabbing a man multiple times only to be trapped in a bomb crater with him as he dies slow enough to make you realize his humanity; the absurd and terrifying sights of soldiers in gas masks; a friend exploding into a spray of blood; WWI era tanks, lumbering steel rhombuses slouching forward and spitting explosions; soldiers with guns that throw fire instead of bullets.
As Paul, Felix Kammerer is good at being simultaneously a generic stand-in for any young person caught up in their country’s war and a distinct person, easy to distinguish and follow. Albrecht Schuch is memorable as “Kat,” a veteran of the trenches. Paul and Kat have quiet moments together, cherished for their calmness and connection. Paul has an arc, though it is uncomplicated (patriotic idealism into jaded realism), and the rare moments of calmness do not build character so much as they maintain humanity. The amazing and moving speech Paul gives to a group of high school students at the behest of his former teacher (whose words inspired him to enlist), where he tells them that it is awful to die for your country, as well as the final image of the 1930 version, one of the most famous and poignant in film history, are replaced with a new gut wrenching ending.
I read one critic describe Sam Mendes’s WWI film 1917, a Best Picture nominee of 2019, as a movie not about the horrors of war, but a horror movie about war. I am not sure I agree with regards to that movie (I found it extremely tense and affecting, but a bit too thrilling to convey horror), but I believe this sentiment is true of Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, and, now, perhaps, Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front; time will tell. This is a rough movie to watch, and I probably would not have seen it if it had not been nominated for Best Picture by the Academy Awards. I was much more willing to watch the 20-minute vomiting and diarrhea scene from Triangle of Sadness than to watch this movie. However, this is one remake I will never begrudge because its effect and the effect of the 1930 version and the novel remain the same: war is cruel and disgusting and the ones who fight and suffer and die have no say in how it is fought or when it ends.
Nominees: Malte Grunert, producer
Director: Edward Berger
Screenplay: Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell; based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque
Cast: Felix Kammerer, Albrecht Schuch, Daniel Brühl
Production Companies: Amusement Park
Distributor: Netflix
Release Date: October 28th, 2022
Total Nominations: 9, including Best Picture
Other Nominations: International Feature Film-Germany; Adapted Screenplay-Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, Ian Stokell; Cinematography-James Friend; Production Design-Christian M. Goldbeck, Ernestine Hipper; Makeup and Hairstyling-Heike Merker, Linda Eisenhamerova; Original Score-Volker Bertelmann; Sound- Viktor Prasil, Frank Kruse, Markus Stemler, Lars Ginzel, Stefan Korte; Visual Effects-Frank Petzold, Viktor Muller, Markus Frank, Kamil Jaffar
All Quiet on the
Western Front was not the first big budget war film to be nominated for or
win Best Picture—that would be Wings(1927)—but
it is the first antiwar film to be recognized by the Academy. This film opens with
a title card explaining that it is “neither an accusation or a confession…
least of all an adventure… It will try simply to tell of a generation of men
who, even though they may have escaped its shells, were destroyed by the war…” Wings was an adventure film about young
men that dreamed of flying airplanes. In 7th
Heaven (1927) war was a fact of life that interrupts a couple’s romance. All Quiet on the Western Front has its
main character telling a classroom full of boys eager to enlist in the army and
go the frontlines, “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country.” The boys
and their teacher call him a coward.
At the beginning of the film The Great War has just broken
out and young Paul (Lew Ayers) jumps up from his desk at school to declare that
he is enlisting in the army after his teacher gives an ultra-patriotic speech
about the glory of war. The other young men in class follow suit and jump up
and declare they will go off to war too. They all hope to go to the front and
they all expect to come home in one piece. Their first experience as soldiers
is the petty tyranny of the local postman turned drill sergeant. He
makes sure the boys get plenty muddy and miss their leave, but that is just
another school experience that in no way prepares them for real combat. The
harsh realities of modern warfare overwhelm Paul and the rest of the new
recruits almost immediately and their experiences only get worse and worse as
the war goes on and on.
All Quiet on the
Western Front had the large budget of $1.4 million (the equivalent of
nearly $21 million in 2016 dollars). With the then recent stock market crash
and ensuing depression less a year before, it was quite a risk for Universal
and its studio head, Carl Laemlle, Jr. The risk turned out to be worthwhile. All Quiet on the Western Front was a hit
at the box office and won Universal its first Best Picture Oscar. The film was
less well received abroad however, most notably in Germany. Based on the novel
by Erich Maria Remarque, inspired by his own experiences at the front, this is
one of the few films about World War I to portray Germans as the main
characters. Laemmle himself was a German immigrant and he and director Lewis Milestone felt they made a film that was antiwar, not anti-German. The film
caused riots in Germany, most notably Berlin, where the disruptions of
screenings—mice were released into theaters showing the film—and subsequent
riots—the beating of projectionists and anyone that looked Jewish—were led by
Joseph Goebbels and Nazi thugs. The film was ultimately banned by the German
government, though the Nazi party had yet to take power. Laemmle agreed to make
cuts to the film and even took out an ad in a Berlin newspaper explaining that
the film was not anti-German, it just objectively showed the experience of war.
The film was rereleased but memories of the Nazi riots kept audiences away. It
would be banned again by the Nazi government a few years later. Interestingly, it
was banned in Poland for being pro-German.
There are several shots and sequences that keep All Quiet on the Western Front visually
interesting; a stark contrast to the visually dull The Racket (1928), also directed by Milestone. Milestone won Best
Director, his second Oscar, making him the first person to win more than one
Oscar and All Quiet on the Western Front the
first film to win awards for Best Picture and Best Director. One of the most
memorable scenes in the movie is an extended tracking shot that shows enemy
soldiers running toward machinegun fire and being mowed down and tumbling into
barbed wire. A bomb goes off in front of one enemy soldier and when the smoke
clears we see a brief shot of his severed hands clutching the barbed wire. The
rest of him is nowhere to be found.
I think this would have been a violent film for its time. Though
there is very little blood, there are many, many dead bodies. There are
explosions galore, bursting bombs, and hand to hand combat, but none of it is
exciting in an adventurous way. One of the early battle scenes has the soldiers
hunkered down under a prolonged bombardment. The shelling goes on and on and
the roof of their bunker cracks dumping dirt on them. It is not the glorious
adventure they imagined as schoolboys.
Perhaps because the characters, even the main characters,
are all basic, thin archetypes, I was never fully engaged with this movie. They
serve the plot just fine, but All Quiet
on the Western Front feels like it is lacking full-fledged characters. The
performances of Louis Wolheim and Lew Ayers may have been fine for the time
that this film was released, but they do not hold up as well as the technical
aspects. The heightened, exaggerated acting style of time feels at odds with
the gritty realism All Quiet on the
Western Front was aiming to achieve.
All Quiet on the
Western Front is impressive technically for its battle scenes and sound
quality. Even more impressive is the fact that it was a big Hollywood movie that
dared to acknowledge the many horrors of war at a time when sentimentality and
happy endings were the order of the day. It is hard not to hold all of the
antiwar film beats and clichés against All
Quiet on the Western Front, however, as with its fellow Outstanding
Production nominee, The Big House and
its genre clichés, it must be kept in mind that this film is the source of
those familiar beats and plot points. All
Quiet on the Western Front is notable for being the first Best Picture
winner that was more than pure escapist entertainment. Unfortunately it has not
aged well.
Nominee: Universal
Producer: Carl Laemmle, Jr.
Director: Lewis Milestone
Screenplay: George Abbott, adaptation & dialogue by
Maxwell Anderson, adaptation by Del Andrews, based on the novel by Erich Maria
Remarque
Cast: Louis Wolheim, Lew Ayers, John Wray
Release Date: August 24th, 1930
Total Nominations: 4, including Outstanding Production
