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Scene from "Nothing New in the West": Not only that I can't take it anymore
Photo: - / dpa
Of course, I checked out how to do it as a Netflix customer.
Before that I had read the reviews, how to do that as a newspaper reader.
So I knew roughly what to expect from this film adaptation.
I really wanted to see the beginning, the impressive mise en scène with the corpses being undressed and the journey of this one uniform in the bloody bag through the laundry and the seamstresses – right up to the hands of the main character Paul Bäumer.
After twelve minutes and 44 seconds I switched off.
With a clear conscience and very consciously.
I won't watch the film either if it wins an Oscar "for Germany," which is not at all unlikely.
Why?
The German World War I drama "Nothing New in the West" is on course to win.
The film has been nominated for nine Academy Awards and has just won the British Baftas.
At the same time, the reviews in Germany are sometimes devastating (sometimes all the more euphoric abroad).
And at the same time, you don't know how many people actually watched the film;
Netflix has not yet released official figures on this, and the streaming service may never be.
A survey in the area, which is of course absolutely unrepresentative, shows that many people do not feel like watching the film.
Some don't even look at it, others stop.
Like me.
Why is that?
Generalizations as to why a movie doesn't generate buzz are difficult.
Personally, I have nothing against the war film genre.
I am only marginally interested in scholastic discussions about what is a (bad) war film and what is a (good) anti-war film.
Even without instruction in film theory, I am able to distinguish a work of art like »The Green Devils of the Mekong« from a work of art like »Apocalypse Now«.
"Nothing new in the West" falls, I suppose, in the latter category.
And I believe that the director seriously wants to tell about the horrors of war in general, the perfidy of the "Great War" in particular and the line that leads from 1918 to 1939.
And quite explicitly, not mythically exaggerated as Coppola said about Vietnam at the time.
That is honorable and I am very interested.
In my personal case, maybe it's because, viewed objectively, my preoccupation with the subject can perhaps be called a bit obsessive.
However, at the age of 12 I was already able to rattle off the list of the "most successful" German fighter pilots and could still record René Fonck's SPAD S.XIII blindfolded today.
I've read and seen everything from »The War of the Buttons« to »Men's Fantasies«, from Remarque to Münkler, from Trakl to Grosz, from Jiinger to Ludendorff, from Kirk Douglas in »Wege zum Glory« to the war tremors from the documentary »They Shall Not Grow Old.
Every success is wished for a committed film like »Nothing New in the West«.
It would be even better if it didn't need him.
I was on the Isonzo, on the Somme and in Fleury-devant-Douaumont, which was once a village near Verdun and today there are only two place-name signs in the forest.
When I think of "Skagerrak" I think of the battle and when I think of Pétain I think of the general, not of Vichy.
I am aware of what Gustav Holst had in mind when composing »The Planets«.
I don't like to call things that are inferior »08/15«.
In short, I'm a little too interested in someone who then never did military service or at least was Herfried Münkler.
I want to know but I don't like to see.
Presumably, even without neurotic pressure-fuelling on this subject, I would know that war is horrible and more likely to be avoided.
In addition, and this may be due to age, the stringing is becoming increasingly delicate.
I just don't like to see someone trying to collect their intestines with both hands.
How men are run over by tanks or drown each other with their bare hands in the mud.
What facial expressions someone has who is choking on mustard gas.
Not only that I can't take it anymore.
I don't see why I should unnecessarily expose myself to disturbing scenes in order to be educated on a horror I've already educated myself on in broad terms.
Every success is wished for a committed film like »Nothing New in the West«.
It would be even better if it didn't need him.
By the way, »Oppenheimer«, the film by Christopher Nolan about the father of the atomic bomb, will be released soon.
I'm looking forward to the reviews.