They Shall Not Grow Old WW I film by Peter Jackson

Saw it yesterday, truly stunning. Despite the fact that I have studied WWI a good bit, seeing (and hearing) the descriptions in full, moving color was breathtaking. A few tears were shed as well.

Highly recommended.

Also, make sure you stay for the bonus bit at the end where Jackson talks about how they made it - that 30 minutes was almost as good as the feature.

Sitting in the Summit in Birmingham waiting for it to start. Left work early to attend. Theater filling up nearly 30 min before showtime.

Will update after it’s over.

Update:

The major reason we don't remember WWI the way we remember WWII isn't solely because of the time -- it's only about 25 years previous -- it's because WWI didn't have the photographic record. No color film. Very little in the way of motion pictures, and sound hadn't yet been incorporated into movies.

In an interesting brief interview shown before the start of the main show, director Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings) said that the major challenge was in restoring old beat-up and deteriorating black-and-white film to look new. He said the colorization wasn't hard, just labor-intensive and time consuming. Creating something they could in fact colorize was the problem.

They succeeded masterfully on that front.

Thought it started a bit slow, but got really interesting after about 15-20 minutes.

I was already familiar with the stories of trench life, but seeing it in restored and colorized form added a whole new dimension. Goes from being an intellectual exercise to a deeper understanding.

The treatment of the leadup to a major attack, and the attack itself, was as compelling as any I've seen. Peter Jackson didn't use any non-archival footage, and didn't supplement it with anything shot today. So there's nothing like the D-Day landing in Saving Private Ryan. But in its own way, They Shall Not Grow Old's approach was just as riveting.

A lot of that is because they use recordings of WWI veterans' comments, taken from interviews done in the 1960s and 1970s. Hearing it straight from someone who was there adds a ton.

There's significant footage of some troops waiting for the signal to go "over the top." Most of them had less than 30 minutes to live.

The camera settles on a young soldier who must have lied about his age. Couldn't have been more than 16 or 17. Looked like the perfect guy anybody would want their sister to bring home. Poor kid was so scared he was shaking. As he stared at the camera, you could almost read his thoughts, "This is the last anyone will see of me."

That face haunts me, wondering if he survived. And knowing that he probably didn't.

The attack itself is shown mainly in still drawings from the day, and Jackson did a great job creating and keeping interest using the veterans' comments as the audio backdrop to closeups of various parts of the drawings.

I can't say They Shall Not Grow Old was really fun or enjoyable. With the exception of a few moments of levity -- it was a much more sexually innocent time for unmarried 18-22 year old Brits, and the treatment of the brothels is humorous -- it's not a smiling / laughing kind of thing. But in the same vein as Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, it is highly worthwhile and time well spent.

I'm betting Jackson gets another Academy Award for Best Documentary.

One last thing -- the Brits had some awful teeth back then. Even though they were pretty young, it seemed like every man there was rotten straight across the upper front four.