All Quiet on the Western Front Editor Sven Budelmann on Cutting the Authentically German Take on World War I

All Quiet on the Western Front is one of the best war pictures of the last 30 years.

In adapting World War I vet Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, director Edward Berger wanted to set the classic German story in its native language for the first time. Doing so gives the project a sense of fresh purpose as well as an authenticity we haven’t previously seen from the story of young German men who enlist in the war but must soon face its horrors. It’s a grim, unforgettable, and brilliantly made film that commands attention across the duration of its running time.

Editor Sven Budelmann partnered with Berger on the project to help shape the massive project. Their collaborative efforts produced a film that underscores the trauma of war on humanity and nature alike. Budelmann cuts the battle sequences with brutal efficiency, and here, in an interview with Awards Daily, he describes how he did it. He also reveals what most interested him in the project, how he worked with Volker Bertelmann’s brilliant score, and what sequences were the most challenging to assemble.

All Quiet on the Western Front streams exclusively on Netflix.

Awards Daily: So, I loved the film. I was mesmerized at what a different take it was on the traditional war film, so I want to dive into that a little bit. But tell me first, what was it about this project that intrigued you?

Sven Budelmann: I heard of the project one year before principal photography. It was around the Berlinale 2020 when Edward told me about the project for the first time, and I was totally excited. But at the same time, I felt a lot of responsibility. We Germans grow up with the guilt and shame of the two World Wars that we started. Plus, the book is one of the most important books in Germany, and everyone has to read it in school. Of course, we wanted to meet the demands of the novel and the two existing film adaptations, but what particularly interested me was that we were going to make a new modern adaptation, which is more from the perspective from the German perspective, from the perspective of the losers. So, there are no heroes, no glory. We wanted to just show the brutality of war in the most authentic and realistic way, almost like a documentary.

Awards Daily: This story has roots going back all the way to one of the first Best Picture winners, so how do you think editing rhythms of war films have changed over time?

Sven Budelmann: We had a certain approach, but I must honestly say that I didn’t watch other war films, particularly not the two existing adaptations because I wanted to stay open to creating something new and didn’t want to be influenced. We had a certain tonality in our mind that we wanted to create. This also goes back to one year before the photography when I had a lot of talks with Edward about tonality, existing films, and music. At this time, we did a mood trailer, so this mood trailer was just to express the tonality of the film. It was just a feeling thing, two minutes. Instead of using images of war, we used images of beautiful nature that got disturbed by an increasingly destructive score. We immediately loved that tonality. There was tension that was created by this combination of beauty and violence. This was something that we loved and wanted to keep that in the movie. This was our approach to make a new version of war.

Also, we had the idea of making it more like a documentary, realistic, authentic, and changing the way the audience interacts with it. There’s nothing like an observer if you watch the documentary. The war machine just goes its way without any interruptions. We spent a lot of time setting up the tonality of the film, which for me takes place in the first 10 to 15 minutes. I strongly believe that there is a virtual contract between the audience and the filmmakers. You set up the rules of tonality and pace in the first few minutes. This is a contract that shouldn’t be broken.

Awards Daily: Considering the score and music, how did your editing interact with Volker Bertelmann’s score?

Sven Budelmann: We were lucky. Volker was a gift. He’s just just such an incredible composer. He gave us this unique score with these iconic sounds. We gave him the first cut, and after after two weeks, he sent us 10 cues. It was a perfect balance of dramaturgical support and still kept the distance. We never wanted to dictate to the audience any feelings.

Awards Daily: You talked about setting that tone initially early on in the film. As the main characters progress through the horrors of this war and as their world just starts to fracture as they stumble toward the end, do the editing rhythms change at all?

Sven Budelmann: Not really. In the film we follow, 17-year-old Paul Bomer Initially, he goes to war based on false promises, and then he quickly realizes in a shocking way that this is not what it is supposed to be. He sees how brutal war is, and he almost got killed several times in the battles, has to kill people himself, and sees his comrades being killed one by one. At the end, he doesn’t care about his own life anymore. This is something that war also does to people. Honestly, this is not something that we essentially created in the editing. Above all this great script and this incredible performance from Felix Kammerer, so I just tried to stay out of the way and just go.

Awards Daily: Another thing that I’m really interested in is the political tension in the scenes where people are trying to negotiate the ceasefire. How do you treat those scenes differently than a battle sequence?

Sven Budelmann: In a way, it’s different. All the negotiation scenes are common dialogue scenes where you would expect a shot-reverse shot approach. We also tried as to be really clear in the cinematic architecture of the scene. Mostly, we just used every camera setup just once in all these scenes. That helps it feel like we’re observing the action and not a typical dialogue scene. We also played a lot with the order of the different moments of when we cut to the negotiation scenes. It wasn’t too easy.

Awards Daily: What was your most challenging sequence to assemble, to get that balance of tonality right?

Sven Budelmann: You might say that it would be the battle scenes, but no. They were so extremely well executed that there wasn’t wasn’t much to do for me. They look great on their own. I actually spent so much time with these battle scenes filled with screaming, shooting, mud, and blood that it was only at the film premiere a few weeks ago that I realized how extremely violent the film is. I was sitting next to my wife, and she begged for me to tell her next time when something bad’s happening but really I didn’t know.

What was most challenging was probably to find the right pace, the balance between the violent scenes and moments of silence. When is the right moment to do it? When does the audience need a break? We found this element of these nature scenes, and we took the scenes and used them as a breathing space between these intense war scenes to keep distance. Then, when we jump back to the protagonists, the impact is even bigger. When we are put in the soldier’s perspective once again and experience what he sees, we use those nature scenes as tool to control the dynamics. I’m proud that we found this element in the editing from the mood trailer because this wasn’t in the script before.

Awards Daily: Given this is the first fully German take on the story, what’s been the reaction when you’ve seen the film with German audiences?

Sven Budelmann: This was the most quiet ending of a film that I ever experienced. When we saw it here, there were 1,000 people in the cinema. It was silent for the whole closing credits. We did this without trying to manipulate the people. We forced the audience to think about it and to reflect on what they just saw. This was what actually what happened. I had goosebumps on my neck, even now when I talk about this. Some people came to me and said it’s such a great film, but I never want to watch it again. I think that was a coping mechanism.