ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Remake Gets a Director

Yes, Enrique Remarque’s WWI novel All Quite on the Western Front is going to get a new adaptation and remake of the classic Academy Award winning 1930's film from director Lewis Milestone. This newest version of the story will be directed by Pay it Forward and Deep Impact director Mimi Leder. I love the original film and I love the book even more. It's such a powerful story, and I'm not opposed to the book getting a new adaptation. I'm just not sure if Leder is the right director for the job. She has mostly been working in TV over the last few years, and her films have all been mediocre. 

The novel tells the the story about the intense and terrifying action of 1918 trench warfare that traumatizes a young and idealistic German soldier on the Western front. It will be interesting to see how Leder tackles the material and how it will look visually. The script for the newest adaptation was written by Ian Stokell and Lesley Paterson. Here's what Leder had to say in a statement,

Even though the original film was made in 1930 at the advent of the talkies, I was moved by its depiction of the terrible senseless brutality of war. With this version, most of it takes place in the last 24 hours of the war. WWI fighting was brutal, hand-to-hand and ugly, and it practically wiped out a generation of young men. What is so compelling is the catastrophic levels of violence, this mind-numbing savagery, and what happens to a boy who in the journey to becoming a man has to become an animal. War destroys the humanity of this young man, stripping away his ability to feel, and making him act like a beast. Taken with the emotionality of how this young boy joined the war out of nationalism as many of our boys do to keep America safe, there is a message here about what happens to them and the politicians who are making war. It's alarming how little this has changed. There is an opportunity to make a great film about war, but it is also an anti-war film, an un-romanticized version of war and its consequences.

What are your thought on Leder directing this adaptation of All Quite on the Western Front?

Here's a brief description of the book:

Paul Baumer enlisted with his classmates in the German army of World War I. Youthful, enthusiastic, they become soldiers. But despite what they have learned, they break into pieces under the first bombardment in the trenches. And as horrible war plods on year after year, Paul holds fast to a single vow: to fight against the principles of hate that meaninglessly pits young men of the same generation but different uniforms against each other--if only he can come out of the war alive.