Germans are right to be incensed by All Quiet on the Western Front: it paints them as the good guys | Nicholas Barber

Making changes to a classic novel is always questionable - but could there be a worse time to risk glorifying invaders?

*This article contains spoilers for the book All Quiet on the Western Front, and the latest film version

Having cleaned up at the Baftas last week, All Quiet on the Western Front is now one of the favourites to win best picture at the Oscars in a fortnight. That's an exciting development for Edward Berger, who directed and co-wrote the film, but German critics may not be so thrilled.

As Philip Oltermann noted in the Guardian, reviewers from Berger's homeland have slated his first world war epic, with one key objection being that it strays so far from the source novel by Erich Maria Remarque. One wonders whether Berger has even read Remarque's novel," said Hubert Wetzel in Suddeutsche Zeitung. If the characters in the film didn't have the same names as those in the book, it would be difficult to find significant parallels between the two works."

Nicholas Barber is a freelance writer on film and pop culture