Year: 2018
Director: Peter Jackson
Country: UK
Language: English
Originally comprised of murky archive film and scratchy audio testimony, Peter Jackson uses his same Lord of the Rings technical talent to transform and restore priceless footage so audiences of 2018, one hundred years after the end of the war, can view the same events in awe and wonder. The clean-up job must have been difficult and taken countless hours, but after having seen this film I can thankfully say that the time and effort was worth it.
This is a documentary about World War I with never-before-seen footage to commemorate the centennial of the end of the war.
Plundering the vast collection of Britain’s Imperial War Museum, Jackson has given us an artistic educational video that surpases all others. This accumulation of century-old film, previously unviewable, emerges like a phoenix via colorization and 3D conversion (among other cleanups). As a result, the footage looks like it was filmed this year. An foreign feeling war is brought incredibly close to home. I feel like I could have known- or been- one of these soldiers.
We start the picture in a boxy black and white frame and, although very unimpressive, prepares us for our jaws to drop when we see the restoration job- which is complete with sound. No doubt inserted via sound editing long after the fact, it helps complete the picture of the war. The sounds of fight and fury create an atmosphere of dread and disease. but also courage and honor.
They Shall Not Grow Old captures what is left out of classroom textbooks; namely the daily mood and morale of the common soldier over the course of four long years. It does a wonderful job, as I've said previously, of making the war feel more personal and closer to home. A very important picture that ought to be seen by people of all ages.
No comments:
Post a Comment