Not So Quiet on the Western Front: German Reactions to Netflix's 2022 Remake

Abstract

In October 2022, Netflix's remake of All Quiet on the Western Front opened to great acclaim in the United States, Great Britain, and other countries, receiving rave reviews from critics and movie-goers alike, eventually winning seven BAFTAs and four Oscars, the most awards ever for a German-language production. In Germany, however, reactions could not have been more different. The film was roundly panned by historians as “flawed, cliché-laden, and unauthentic,” and derided by critics as Oscar bait, an anti-American trope often used to disparage a cultural production.. Does the film pander to popular images about war in a way that has different meaning in Germany than, say, in the US or the UK, with their different memory cultures? How much is German dislike of the film shaped by the legacy of the Second World War and not just the First? With these questions in mind, this essay will consider German reactions to the 2022 film and what they say about Germany's memory culture, paying close attention to the film's language, connotations, and imagery that may be particularly meaningful to German audiences.