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…

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…

I was looking forward to seeing this, until I remembered Peter Jackson made a mockumentary that was in poor taste to silent film lovers: Forgotten Silver (he just never ends the joke, although the end credits specify that it's fiction).

This film is indeed a real documentary, and furthermore, it's a tribute to his grandfather who was a soldier in The Great War. The idea that war is useless is espoused. Young men had to endure horrors that no one should even dream of.

There is an introduction from Peter Jackson. Most of the movie is shown in 3-D. I found it pretty unnecessary, but hey, it was not bad. I do prefer things to jump out at me when…

A thoroughly detailed, powerfully haunting & surprisingly immersive account of the British soldiers' harrowing time during the First World War that also doubles as an astounding work of restoration, They Shall Not Grow Old is unlike any war documentary, for it manages to transport the viewers back to that timeline and puts them right into the soldiers’ shoes to make them witness the carnage from an unsettling close range.

Taking the original never-before-seen footage of World War I, applying colours & sound to those archived images, carefully arranging it with soldiers’ oral excerpts of their first-hand experience and employing a few cinematic touches to give those frames a lifelike quality, They Shall Not Grow Old delivers an emotional impact so profound & affecting…

Peter Jacksons bemerkenswerte, unmittelbarere und an die Nieren gehende Dokumentation, wurde im November 2018, 100 Jahre nach dem Ende des Ersten Weltkriegs, von der BBC in Auftrag gegeben.

Der Film versucht den Zuseher in die banale und schreckliche Realitäten des 1. Weltkriegs eintauchen zu lassen und dies gelingt ihm auf wirklich erstaunliche Art und Weise. Als Zuseher kann man nur dankbar sein, dass uns Jackson zumindest die Gerüche des Grabenkriegs erspart, die in der Dokumentation immer wieder erwähnt werden.

"The shall not grow old" beginnt mit einem Vorwort des Regisseurs, der uns informiert, dass das Imperial War Museum vor fünf Jahren mit rund 600 Stunden, nie zuvor gesehenem Filmmaterial von der Westfront auf ihn zukam. Man bat ihn, daraus eine…

Many Americans are oblivious to the horrors that British, French, and other allied troops face for three grueling years without help from US forces. World War I is where we really learned for the first time what atrocities man could inflict upon other men. Yes, all through time there’s been brutalities in war, but in WWI...we could see it. Poets recorded it in writing. The images are haunting. 

Is often overlooked in American history — glossed over like, “yeah, these alliances really fucked then over!” but it was where modern warfare met armies trained with traditional techniques. The body count was brutal; Britain more of less lost an entire generation of young men at the Seine, on the Marne, in…