They Shall Not Grow Old

You might be thinking “World War I?  I don’t really care about that.  It’s no WWII buddy.”  First of all WWI was a catastrophic event that impacted hundreds of millions of lives and has been criminally overlooked as a pivotal part of modern history.  Yea, WWII was fuckin’ nuts but “the war to end all wars” is unbelievably fascinating.

Second, this doc is different.  It’s made by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings and King Kong 2005 fame.  He’s a serious WWI buff who has a huge collection of memorabilia like military outfits, weapons and period magazines (all of which were used as research materials).  When he was given the chance to put together this film he jumped at it.  He wasn’t given any kind of parameters as to what should be included or what type of movie to make at all.  Jackson spent a full year just sorting through the hundreds and hundreds of hours of film and audio.

And after hearing interviews of British vets done in the 50’s and 60’s it became evident that they should be telling the story.  So the entire narrative is made up of clips of first hand accounts of real soldiers that were there.  Their memories and stories are a treasure trove of insight.  We start with how some heard about the war being declared and how a helluva lot of them were underage when they signed up but lied and got in anyway.  Then we learn what training camp was like with drill instructors barking at you and hiking for dozens of miles on end.  Finally we move to the western front in France where the bulk of the picture is spent.  The soldiers’ accounts range from dispiriting, to humorous, to disgusting, to cordial to absolutely fucking terrifying.  Trench life, battle and all the dreary hours and days in between are recounted in stunning detail.

To go along with the unique narration Jackson meticulously restored footage from the war.  Scenes were brightened, darkened, jitteriness was removed, the speed of everything was adjusted to make it look like how it’s supposed to in real life instead of everyone scurrying around like wind up toys, and all of the western front footage was colorized and zoomed in slightly so it could be viewed in widescreen.  When you combine all these techniques the results are in-fuckin’-sane.  My jaw dropped to the point where I thought for a minute that Jackson shot modern day recreations.  But I soon realized no, I’m watching the actual shit from like 1914-1918.  Jackson did add sound effects to tie the whole thing together and that’s the final piece that puts it over the top.  It’s synced perfectly with the visuals so it truly is like you’re stepping back in time.  Amazing.

Jackson was a stickler for accuracy too.  For example there’s a part where a superior is reading a speech to his men and Jackson wanted audio to go with it.  So they found the boiler plate speech that was being circulated among the troops at the time, which regiment was in their specific shot, what part of Britain they were from and got someone from that region to recite the speech so the accent would be appropriate.  Jesus.

Holy shit guys I cannot recommend this enough.  Everything about this project is mind blowing.  Considering the age and generally poor condition all the footage was in Jackson and his team put together probably the most well restored pieces of film in existence.  Not only that but they had the brilliant idea of letting the soldiers involved in the war tell their stories themselves.  It’s incredibly compelling because this isn’t an overview of the entire war or even one major battle but instead the average (British) grunt’s tale.  It’s what they ate, how they dealt with boredom, what the living conditions were like, how they interacted with enemy soldiers and etc.  This indispensable minutiae paints a vivid and humanizing picture of The Great War.  This thing was comprised of people and this is what it was like day to day and how they coped.

You gotta see this.