All Quiet on the Western Front, but Not So Sunny
The Oscar season is upon us again and as I glanced down the list of nominees for the various big awards, I saw films that I have seen and admired, films I have seen and thought were not worthy and even a film that I have tried to watch twice and cannot get into despite being told its sooooo good. But one movie completely slipped by me even though I’ve known the title for years because it is based on a famous 1929 novel by Erich Maria Remarque, who wrote about the ravages of WWI as seen from the perspective of a young German soldier. The Movie is All Quiet on the Western Front and it ranks as a classic or ironic war movies. I am not sure what made Netflix decide to produce this movie yet again in 2022 after it had been made in 1930 and 1979, but something about its message must resonate. And Netflix did a good enough job with this remake that this gritty and bloody war movie is a contender for a few Oscars. We could argue that the futility of the war in Ukraine might have been the cause for its making or its greatness, but we understand the movie-making cycle too well to think that could be the case. The underlying irony of the movie seems to lie in the fact that just when you think its safe to get back into the water, that’s when the shark bites. All is never quiet on the Western Front. And that is where the real message lies.
Indeed, the German General decides that his military honor and the honor of Deutschland rests with him forcing his beaten and battered troops, including this one lone youthful soldier, into one last battle of futility so that he can claim that there was one last victory before the armistice. Naturally, the war-weary soldiers want only to get home. With fifteen minutes to go, the general forms his attack and sends his men into the field of futility. The young soldier, who has shown a mix of strength and mercy throughout the movie and the final battle, is skewered through the heart in the final moment before the ceasefire is rung and sits quietly in a trench of mud as his dog tag is collected by the next young soldier assigned to tally the dead.
This book was written during the peace between the two world wars and was banned by Adolf Hitler. To him, it denigrated German nationalism and discouraged aggression by showing the dark and horrible side of war. That never sits very well with someone who’s message relies upon inflaming people to violence and wants them to think only of themselves and to let everyone else go to Hell. I have spoken before about the Fourth Turning and the eighty year cycle of war that seems to infect our country and world. Well, we seem to be back at that early stage of the turning once again. After a few weeks in the Middle East, immersed in antiquities and the romance of millennia gone by, a time when I am fairly certain any petty concerns I have for the ruthlessness of man are minor compared to the realities that existed then, I have returned to the news cycle of Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis. It’s as though Trump is the Kaiser and DeSantis the Fuhrer. Trump teed up the nationalistic rancor and DeSantis is promising to deliver on its hateful intentions. Of course, the Kaiser at least abdicated and Trump has done no such thing and remains in the desperate hunt for salvation in re-election, sending troops into futile battles for his own image preservation, while the dog pack stiffens its resolve to both indict him from the left and challenge him politically from the right. While in the White House, Trump moved his home from Fifth Avenue to Mar-a-Lago, but neither home seemed to comfort him when it was time to go home. The hope for an interregnum of peaceful enlightenment seems as lost as it was in 1930’s Germany.
The cover of the New Yorker last week shows a cocked-headed DeSantis sharpening his knives, preparing to dissect a stack of books that are undoubtedly too woke for his taste. I have also watched him on TV in Iowa bragging about sending 50 illegal immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. He is one pack dog who is waiting for others to take Trump down before risking a premature attempt to assassinate the Kaiser. It seems an all too familiar vignette, especially as all book-burning episodes tend go (winning hearts and minds of the alienated and spitefully disappointed being what it is), and it’s hard not to think about the Nazi rallies in Nuremberg and elsewhere 85 years ago. We don’t seem to learn very well and are thus doomed to repeat our failings as a people, so still we venture forth into the world aggressively seeking more than we have at home.
Our trip to Egypt and Jordan ended two days ago with two long flights home from Amman, totaling some 16+ hours of flight time, which at 7,600 miles and 11 hours apart is almost as far away, east to west, as you can get on this earth unless you are on the Equator. Being on a luxury foreign trip is not like being at war on the Western Front or on a Odyssey of political aggression, but we were away a long time and we were quite anxious to get back home. Isn’t that how it always goes? When you are home you can’t wait to get away and when you are away, home becomes the goal of most travelers since the days of Odysseus. Everything will be perfect when we get home again.
Our return, however, was less than perfect. It began with the one hour ride from the Dead Sea to the Queen Alia Airport, during which I had to ask the driver to stop for me to use the bathroom rather urgently. Gas stations are never wonderful rest stops, but at 5:30am, even in the Jordanian suburbs, you take what you can get. Then our British Airways flight was delayed enough to concern us about our Heathrow connection five hours later. The flight itself had only economy seats and Business Class was defined as having a spare seat between two economy seats, which made a long flight longer. Heathrow is always a bit of a racetrack through the muddy trenches, but it was especially so for us trying not to miss our flight. And then, for eleven hours in the more accommodative lie-flat seats, we bided out time with movies and TV series, a bit more comfortably than the huddled troops in the trench, but no less anxious for home. My stomach troubles subsided, but Melisa’s took over at the expense of a handy blanket when no air sickness bags were to be found, and like the nervous soldiers, she emptied the contents of her stomach. So, a less than pleasant long flight home that was about to get even worse.
At San Diego baggage claim, they announced that those connecting from Amman were unlikely to get their luggage. But with no one from BA Baggage Handling still on duty to help, we just went out to find our Uber and went about trying to file online reports of missing baggage, like just another casualty of battle. Once we finally connected with our shared Uber and started heading home to the hilltop, I recognized that I was both very, very tired, but also feeling a cold coming on. By morning I tested positive for COVID, which I suppose was my reward for a trip well had, but felt like a bayonet through the heart as well. I spent the next 48 hours more or less in bed, trying to make sure I didn’t allow a lack of rest to give support to the virus lodging itself too solidly in me (this is how my simplistic medical mind works) and I wandered through my home trench in a trance. It did not feel like a loss of anything special to me since those two days were mostly foggy and rainy weather in a not so sunny California way. And it was during that altered state time of medicinal trance (NyQuil and DayQuil induced), in the tradition of the Native American Indian that the realization dawned on me.
We may go out into the world to either enjoy its marvels or plunder its opportunities only to find that like Odysseus and his beloved Ithaca, the only place worth pursuing is home and yet our very departure from it has altered it forever. Whether through war, the preamble to war or global climate change, all is never quiet on the western front again and even our beloved California is never quite so sunny.