This German film is based on a 1928 book about a war that was fought, in filth, vermin and desperation, more than 100 years ago. And yet Edward Berger’s stunning, horrifying indictment of lives sacrificed on the whims of powerful, thin-skinned men remains uncomfortably resonant today. Opening with an extraordinary, potent sequence that follows a young soldier into battle between the trenches of the western front, then tracks his blood-stained, bullet-shredded tunic back to a military laundry, the film makes it starkly clear that the life of a man is valued less than the uniform he died in.

That uniform is then passed on to teenager Paul (Felix Kammerer), our wide-eyed guide on this descent into hell. Fresh-faced and full of the fervour instilled by his teacher’s rousing speeches about patriotic duty, Paul forges his father’s signature and signs up with his schoolmates, with dreams of serving the kaiser. But he finds himself caught in a back-and-forth tussle over a few hundred metres of blood-soaked mud, numbed by hunger and trauma as, one by one, his friends are slaughtered.

While not as showy as Sam Mendes’s sweeping, single-shot takes in 1917, this is remarkable, if harrowing, film-making. Moments of striking beauty – sunlight carved into exultant rays by skeletal winter trees – are almost as shocking and disquieting as the scenes of suffering. Then there’s the score: haunted, almost organic-sounding compositions by Volker Bertelmann, with a groaning, ominous three-note motif, played on a harmonium, which sounds like the earth itself is howling in pain.

• In cinemas now; on Netflix from 28 October