They Shall Not Grow Old

I don't watch every documentary that is released, however the ones I've seen are amazingly well done. There is so much we can learn from documentaries such as "Murderball", "The Corporation", "Fed Up", "Supersize Me", "Roger and Me", "Capitalism: A Love Story", "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" to mention a handful, but when I saw "They Shall Not Grow Old", it probably is the best documentary I believe I've seen.

 

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson comes the groundbreaking documentary "They Shall Not Grow Old", presented on the centenary of the end of the First World War, Applying state-of-the-art restoration, colorization and 3D technologies to century-old footage--carefully chosen from hundreds of hours of original Great War film held in the archives of the Imperial War Museum (IWM)--Jackson has created an intensely gripping, immersive and authentic cinematic experience. The only narration comes from Great War veterans themselves, selected from over 600 hours of BBC and IWM archive interviews, resulting in a gripping account of "The War to End All Wars", told by the soldiers who experienced it.

 

Some of the voices of the soldiers used in this documentary are Thomas Adlen, Donald Bain, Thomas Baker, Leslie Briggs, Henry Carter, Charles Chabot, Walter Cook, William Daniel, Jack Dillon, Stanley Down, James Payne, Arthur Smith and Henry Barnes.

 

This was brilliantly and compassionately directed by Peter Jackson ("Dead Alive" '92, "The Frighteners" '96, "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy '01, '02, '03, "King Kong" '05, "The Lovely Bones" '09, "The Hobbit" Trilogy '12, '13, '14) plus others and shorts. You will know how much work Jackson put this film when you watch the making of it at the end of the credits of the documentary itself. It's a 30 minute segment that chronicles the restoration of the film, the colorization and even fitting in the voices of the soldiers on the original footage with the voices of the veterans. He went to the same area where the Western Front took place and took thousands of pictures so as to incorporate the correct colors we see in the final release. Footage back then was shot in a 16mm frames/second so it appeared that the movement of people was faster and jerkier than normal, so Jackson and his crew at Park Road Post in New Zealand were able to quicken the speed of the footage to a 24mm frames/second--the normal speed today, so it looked very normal, Even in some shots that panned across the countryside where objects seemed too far away, Jackson was able to zoom the footage in so objects became clearer and more prominent which gives the audience a personal feel to what they are watching. Jackson starts the film out in the typical smaller size film format in its black and white and 16mm film speed and gradually brings us this much larger, colorized format in the newer 24mm film speed, and it just blows you away. It is breathtaking. I kind of akin this to Lowell Thomas' "This is Cinerama" whereas Thomas explains a new format in film making using a spliced huge 3 screen format to produce one picture. It starts in its usual small, black and white format, and when Thomas finishes the explanation, he tells the audience, "and this is Cinerama", and, all of a sudden, the screen goes to gigantic in full living color. Back then it was awe-inspiring to audiences. When I saw a retrospective of it, it was amazing to me, and I'm used to color, larger-than-life screens, so I can only imagine what that must've looked like then. The work on this was exhaustive and labor-intensive, but the outcome is stunning. It took Jackson 4 years to complete this and by what we see, as the audience, we can surely see why. It was a personal film for Jackson since the film is dedicated to the memory of his grandfather, William Jackson (1890-1940), who served in WWI in Britain. He lost his life at age 50 due to injuries incurred during that war which spanned from 1914-1918. Nearly 1 million men in Britain and their countrymen lost their lives in this war, and it was a brutal one. In fact, it is rated R for a certain amount of war brutality, hence the adage, "war is hell". If you like this brand of filmmaking, Jackson's "The Adventures of Tintin: Prisoners of the Sun" has been announced.

 

If you like documentaries, this is one that will resonate with you, especially if you can appreciate ones centering around wartime. Plus, there haven't been many films chronicling WWI as much as WWII or the Middle East war or even the Vietnam war. The films that come to mind about WWI are "All Quiet on the Western Front" and "Sergeant York". That about sums that up, so it is refreshing to see this. Jackson said that he made this so people out there could possibly start looking up their ancestry and maybe, just maybe they might come to realize that someone in their family might've been in the Great War. Who knows?

 

Out of 4 Stars: 4               Rated: R           133mins. (99min. running time, 30min. making of the film and a 4min. introduction at the beginning of film.)