“Thought we’d never make it”

The novel Nothing New in the West by Erich Maria Remarque, published in 1928, tells of the horrors of the First World War, by sending us to the western front with German soldiers. After two English-language film adaptations (1930 by Lewis Milestone and 1979 by Delbert Mann), the first German adaptation of the material was made in the past two years – under the Netflix umbrella.

Director Edward Berger in an interview about the remake of Nothing New in the West

Nothing new in the west in 2022 is one of the largest productions that the streaming service has implemented in this country. Expectations are high: not only is an important literary work being reworked here. In the West nothing new goes than German candidate in the Oscar race 2023. However, director and screenwriter Edward Berger does not show any sign of all the fuss.

He is just as used to complex projects as he is to intimate films. His work ranges from local TV productions to the Berlinale contributions Jack and All My Loving to international series like The Terror, Your Honor and Patrick Melrose. Ahead of the Netflix launch of Nothing New in the West, I caught up with Edward Berger via Zoom to talk about his biggest film to date.

You can watch the trailer for Nothing New in the West here:

Berger himself cannot say how expensive nothing new was in the West. “The money is never enough”explains the filmmaker with regard to the scope of production. “You can always use ten more days of shooting. But somehow you manage to cope with the restrictions. And you always have them. With every film.” Nothing new in the West, but there is hardly any sign of this.

Moviepilot: How did you first come into contact with the book?

Edward Berger: I first read the book when I was 15 or 16 and then again in my 20s. At the time, I was very concerned. And while it has played no discernible part in my life for the past 25 years, it has always been present. I noticed that when the filming suddenly became topical.

What was the moment that bothered you the most back then?

What really sticks in my memory is the scene in which Paul Bäumer [der Protagonist der Geschichte] lies in a crater with a French soldier as if they were trapped there. He witnesses the death of another human being up close.

Were you nervous when you realized that you have to act on this moment now?

Completely nervous. When I asked my family at home if I should do this film, my daughter immediately stormed up to me and said: “Absolutely! I just read the book at school and I can’t get that scene in the crater out of my head.” Of course, I was very nervous and wanted to do everything right. During rehearsals, the scene was suddenly 10 minutes long. The assistant director immediately asked, whether we can simplify them to stay on schedule, but I knew that wasn’t an option if I wanted to meet the template and my daughter’s expectations.

That moment also haunted me the most back then. Why do you think the scene is so memorable for so many?

At that moment it becomes clear what death means exactly. We experience with Paul what the war has made of him. At the same time, five minutes later he has already forgotten the horror and continues to murder on the battlefield. Basically, this is the moment when his innocence dies and with it all his ideals. And all these complex things happen in a simple scene.

The crater scene isn’t the only intense moment in the film. What I remember most is the mud and dirt behind which the soldiers gradually disappear. What were your thoughts on the staging?

I wanted viewers to experience a physical film. That they crawl through this mud and dirt with Paul Bäumer. At the same time, I tried to keep a certain distance with the camera. I wanted to be a touch in the observation and not get too manipulative. I definitely didn’t want to fall into the aesthetics of American or English war films. The people in this film gradually become animals. If there is something to eat, then there is something bestial about it.

It’s all about archaic basic needs like hunger and thirst. Paul Bäumer and his comrades crawl through the earth, they run across endless fields. Filming was also very physically demanding. Last but not least, the soldiers at that time wore uniforms made of a material that was completely impractical for combat operations. It got so full of rain that the costumes quickly weighed 40 to 50 kilos – and these leather boots too. This presented the actors with great challenges.

Did this intense shoot haunt you beyond the set?

Yes absolutely. It took me at least half a year to digest this shooting. I was physically very drained.

You’ve shot many different things. German films, American series – also eerie genre material like The Terror. Nothing new in the West but plays in a different league with its battle scenes. What was the biggest challenge for you during the production?

There were of course a lot of things that I had never done in this form before: long takes with explosions, tanks, coordinated fight sequences, special effects in the midst of a lot of actors and extras. So I have a lot of time with a cameraman in preparation [James Friend] spent trying to figure out how to make viewers experience the story in the most immersive way that they might be exhausted themselves after watching the film. It took a long time to formulate all of this. Ultimately, that also spurs me on: I like the challenge of doing things that I’ve never tried before. Because that always brings surprises and something new for me too.

What moment are you most proud of?

Those are the battle sequences. Each for themselves. They are all shot very differently and each has its own aesthetic. We must have been on this battlefield for five or six weeks. When the last day of shooting finally arrived, the exhaustion was great, but the relief even greater. I often thought that we will never make it.

Is everything on the battlefield “real” or did you work more with digital effects?

A lot is real. The VFX supervisor, who is responsible for the computer effects, said after the shoot that the film actually got by without effects, because that’s how it worked. Of course that is not entirely true. You always have a few long shots in which you add the backgrounds. But I tried to capture everything that happened right in front of the camera right on the set. As the dirt hurls through the air and the actors run across the battlefield, the light changes. This has its own aesthetic and is difficult to recreate digitally.

The film is not only visually very distinctive. The soundtrack and the music are also exciting. There are many quiet moments when the silence is almost unbearable – and then a striking, menacing three-tone motif. How did that come about?

For me it was important that the film thrives on contrasts. Loud, quiet. Fast Slow. near, far Dirty battlefield, clean train. These contrasts offer the viewer new challenges again and again. This should also be reflected in the sound design. As for the music, I said to Volker Bertelmann, our composer, that I would like a sound that I had never heard before. It should sound new and different, but not force any emotions. Rather, it should interpret Paul’s gut feeling. What is he feeling? The anger, the fear, the hate, the longing. The music should express that.

Volker then took an instrument that he inherited from his grandmother: a harmonium. This is a 100 year old instrument, from that time so to speak, even if it doesn’t sound like it. You can even hear the mechanics clicking in the background when the air is pumped in while playing. When I do that [mit dem Harmonium gespielte] When I heard Drei-Ton-Motiv for the first time, I knew immediately that this is our music. We built the entire soundtrack on that.

The biggest change compared to the original book is the added storyline about the politician Matthias Erzberger, played by Daniel Brühl, who tries to negotiate the peace treaty with the Allies. What made you decide to add this part?

The film comes out around 90 years after the book, 100 years after the end of the war. Our perspective is now completely different, because there was another world war that overshadowed everything before it. This is just the beginning of a much worse horror. On the one hand, I wanted to preserve the essence of Remarque’s novel: young people sent to war by demagogues lose their innocence and slowly die an inner, if not actual, death.

On the other hand, I wanted to add an element that suggests the future. Daniel Brühl says one sentence in the film: “Be fair to your opponent, otherwise he will hate this peace.” This is exactly what the nationalist Germans later accused Erzberger of doing. If politicians hadn’t betrayed the military and given up the war, the military would have won – that was the myth, the lie that was spreading at the time and was used to legitimize the next war of aggression.

A passage from the book that does not appear in the film is Paul Bäumer’s leave from the front at home. Was there a reason you canceled that brief return emphasizing the alienation of the soldiers?

When adapting a book like Nothing New in the West, you have to put the spotlight on it, and it’s a very subjective feeling as to what you include and what you don’t. In this case, it came naturally with the introduction of Daniel Brühl’s character, which shifts the film’s action to a few days, weeks before the end of the war. Dramaturgically, there was no longer any room for leave from the front.

Did you watch any other war movies or even the first two movies of Nothing New in the West in preparation for shooting?

Of course, I watched all the major war films to learn how others approached the subject. That’s how I found out what I want to do and what not. I also watched the 1930s version of Nothing New in the West, but immediately put it down because I was afraid it would influence me too much or even prevent me from making my own film from this book. It is a great responsibility to adapt this material, especially as it is the first German film adaptation. Then there was a film classic in the neck – I had enormous respect for that, of course.

When you say you’ve watched other war films to learn from them, what were you most afraid of doing wrong with your film?

A big reason for making the film was that as Germans we have a very different perspective on the war than the English and Americans. They are often proud that they defended their country and liberated Europe from fascism during World War II. This mentality influences the films that come out of these countries. But for me it was clear: if I tell this story from Germany, it can’t be a heroic story, because we have nothing to be proud of. is. So my biggest fear was heroizing the characters or glorifying the plots.

Nothing new in the West has been in German cinemas since September 29, 2022. The remake was released on Netflix on October 28, 2022.

How did you like the remake of Nothing New on the West?