Directed by: Peter Jackson
With They Shall Not Grow Old, we bear witness to a war fought over 100 years ago, as if transported back to 1914. We feel like we are in the trenches with the British soldiers who had to battle not just the enemy, but disease, starvation, rats, lice, rotting corpses, bullets, bombs, gas, and the innate fear that their lives could be snuffed out by an unseen bullet. Those who miraculously survived returned home to England to find their war met with indifference. When World War I started in 1914, the British government used considerable resources to drum up patriotic fervor and instill in men nineteen and older (and in some cases younger) a sense of duty requiring them to sign up for the army. It became peer pressure. The government made it sound like the upcoming war was an adventure they could proudly tell their children about. The fact that many of them would die on the battlefields of Europe wasn't exactly in the brochure.
The men who signed up for basic training were nervous, but soon excited about the prospect of fighting for their country. Some of the many soldiers who provide voice-over narration (they are not seen) were thrilled to go. Heck, it's not every day you get to see Belgium or France. But, their thrill is soon replaced by the harsh and ugly reality of the battlefield. With basic training, you get a bed and three squares a day. In the trench warfare of World War I, they slept standing up, ate whatever food they could find (even moldy), and drank water from a jug used to carry gasoline. They could still taste the gas in the water, but it's better than going thirsty. And don't even get me started on where and how they were forced to defecate.
Peter Jackson uniquely recreates the war through use of 100-plus year old archive footage. Some is in the original black and white with the speed reduced, while others are convincingly colorized so the footage appears as if it were shot on a movie set. The film itself is slowed down and the 3D further adds to the chilling effect, placing us in the middle of the action. In some cases, the soldiers look at the camera and it feels as if they are looking right at us. This isn't the shoddy colorization Ted Turner attempted on classic black and white movies thirty years ago. The effect is real and captures the daily lives of the soldiers who may not even be alive an hour after they were filmed. The soldiers weren't as much interested in the progress of the war as they were simply trying to survive a few more minutes at a time. Their smiles during the periods in between battles were soon replaced by sorrow, fear, anger, or in many cases death. Those who returned from battle had much different countenances than those who were heading towards battle.
They Shall Not Grow Old not only contains scenes of violence and bloodshed, but the narrators are the soldiers themselves who likely told their stories for documentaries made decades ago. Some look back on the war with regret, others with pride, but most also understand that most people, even their loved ones, could not possibly grasp the effect the war had on them. People could not empathize because they were safely tucked away at home. The war has created not only camaraderie, but the only other people the soldiers could talk to about what they shared together. Their camaraderie extended to the German soldiers as well, who were also pawns of their government's desire to expand the German empire.
Through the superior computer technology used to alter the century-old war footage, They Shall Not Grow Old creates a unique, lasting, and thoughtful view of not just the war, but a grave sense that what was lost on the battlefields of Europe will never be regained. And we witness it, and maybe even understand it for the first time.
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