Nicholas Barber is right to air significant objections to loaded inventions in Edward Berger’s remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (Germans are right to be incensed by All Quiet on the Western Front, 27 February).
Erich Maria Remarque was invalided out of the army in 1917, but used his experiences to portray the life of a young soldier throughout the war, up to its end, when he portrayed the German army as retreating. Berger’s remake, however, goes out of its way to emphasise that the German army was holding the same lines of four years previously and, in case we hadn’t noticed it, tells us the same in a closing caption.
