On the one hand, there is demonstrated meaning in the juxtaposition of the safety of the negotiation rooms and homes of the wealthy generals with the Front. The plot even departs from the Front on numerous occasions, switching instead to the negotiation of the armistice as the war wraps up. The lens is perpetually slick, urging the viewer to feel uninvolved in the conflict, even as its content urges on its horrors. The camera in All Quiet has a Fincherian quality to it, gliding seamlessly through destruction and remaining an invisible observer untouched by any of war’s horrors. Where the film does diverge from the classical war film, it is toward inhumanity and sanitization. Just as this battle scene is to be retread time and time again with slightly different faces, the audience is forced to undergo that same experience, watching a trope in film after film, only to be reminded of the horrors of war yet again. Ironically, though, the film’s anonymization also feels particularly significant to the audience anonymous characters only serve to instill the viewer with a sense of triteness. The film instills a facelessness to its characters, framing their exchangeability as surpassing even that of military garb. Very quickly, we realize that the continuity between the opening and the main plot is the uniforms, taken off the dead men before being washed and recycled for the next stage of recruits. The 2022 All Quiet on the Western Front opens cleverly, depicting a horrifying battle through the eyes of non-characters, all rapidly dying. In reality, the new All Quiet on the Western Front represents a lateral step in the history of the war film it ironically retreads the same path of the genres’ previous decades while undercutting its own premise through distanced filmmaking and attempts at distinction. A war in Ukraine and apparent proximity to nuclear catastrophe would suggest the need for a reminder of the horrors of war. The 2022 remake, a German-language Netflix production from relatively unknown director Edward Berger, attempts to argue for existence on the same grounds. Its then-radical pacifistic message proved to be a prescient omen between two World Wars and the filmmaking language it’s credited with inventing became a blueprint for the entire war genre subsequent to its release. Actually, that would have been awesome.The last time a filmed adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front was nominated for Best Picture, Variety suggested distribution by the League of Nations, its premiere was sabotaged by Hitler’s Brownshirts, and the film was banned in Australia for fear that it would undermine faith in the military. Like Anthem wants to shove its name and owls all over the goddamn place, but does anyone really turn on a wrestling program and suddenly start wondering what company owns them and if they have an animal mascot? I’ll say this for the Dixie Carter, you never saw her repping her parents’ Panda Energy business by bringing a live panda out before a Pay Per View. Instead of the promotion being called “Impact Wrestling” like before (because, you know, it’s not like a law or anything that wrestling promotions have to be named in acronyms), it’s now GFW and the show is called Impact and it’s owned by Anthem? It seems like there’s a lot of unnecessary information. In an interview I read with the head of Total Nonstop Global Force Impact Wrestling (Where Wrestling Matters), Jarrett said that the Global Force Wrestling relaunch was an attempt to clear things up, but I’m really not sure what to make of this logo. But instead it was just business as usual EXCEPT for their new logo: Green ropes, Jeff Jarrett statues, karatbars raining down from the heavens. When I turned on Impact Wrestling last night I was expecting a big Global Force Wrestling relaunch.
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