Among the unruly film conservationist community – an elusive and underloved subsection of society at the best of times – there is much discontent afoot. Peter Jackson’s latest project, a commission from the Imperial War Museum to mark the centenary of the First World War’s conclusion, has been considered by some in said community to be an act of barbarity, an unjustifiable marring of historical record for the sake of empty titillation. This project, entitled They Shall Not Grow Old, is understandably controversial: Jackson has taken archive footage from the Western Front and not only colourized it, but dubbed it with sound and rendered it in 3D. And that’s not even to mention blowing up 4:3 to 16:9, often considered…

This, simply put, is an amazing film that everyone should be required to see. Peter Jackson has miraculously restored World War I film footage and colorized it. That is the least of the accomplishments here. There are over 50 different soldiers from Britan, England, Canada, New Zealand & Australia that were recorded around 1914 who share their stories of what we are seeing unfold on the screen. It starts out with the drafting of men as young as 16 years old, to the climax of the final rush to the German trenches & barbed wire during the final battle of the war. Much credit is given to the empathy that the English troops showed toward their captured German counterparts, as neither party…

I don’t know if they’re doing this at all the screenings, but I was lucky enough to have a 30-minute behind-the-scenes documentary of the film play after the credits. Absolutely amazing seeing the technical feats and their process. My screening was also in 3D, which was pretty effective.

Narratively, this is nothing groundbreaking for the documentary format. It’s basically audio of interviews with footage playing which loosely pictures what’s being described. Although it’s the sheer organization and editing of that 700 hours of footage and 300 hours of audio interviews that’s incredible. The fact that Jackson chose to tell the story solely from the perspective of the soldiers who were *there* and exclude all other historians and “experts” was a…

The colorization of this documentary is often problematic. Sometimes the soldiers look like the alien bounty hunters from the X-Files. Sometimes they look like blobs because the film resolution is too low. Sometimes they look like marionettes all herky-jerky and with unhuman like movements. Sometimes the colorization makes it look like animation.

However, despite all that it works. Seeing these men in color even further humanizes them and seeing scenes from this war in color make it feel more resonant and modern. Many scenes looked like they could’ve been from Korea or Vietnam. World War I is a war I’m not super familiar with and seeing real footage of trenches, no man’s land, battles, and the casualties was heartbreaking and…

Personally, I have an interest in World War 1 since my great granddad served with the British army and was a training officer in the IRA for the war of independence. My granddad would tell stories to us about his fathers time in the war, how he kept his rifle under his bed and how he met Irish President Eamon De Valera. This got me so interested in this period of time that I’d look up every detail about it. When I heard that Peter Jackson was doing a WW1 documentary, I had to watch it.

What are the positives?

They Shall Not Grow Old is one of the more unique documentaries I’ve seen. Most documentaries have interviews and narrations…