As we approach the centenary of the end of the First World War, Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings, Bad Taste) has created a fantastic new documentary in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, 14-18 Now and the BBC: They Shall Not Grow Old.
Opting to avoid standard narration, Jackson has focused on letting the soldiers themselves tell their story, through the use of recorded oral history. Therefore, there is no overarching political potted history, or military strategy analysis, but a raw honest personal account of what it was like to take part in what was supposed to be the war to end all wars.
Although we understand, and know what happened, time and other factors has lessened the impact, and the true horror of what that experience must have been like.
To try and bring the oral history further to life, 100 year old, original footage has been colourised, converted to 3D, and then had dialogue and background sounds added. The effect is something to behold and draws you in, all the time making the soldiers more and more relatable. The footage, which contains both military activities and some much more mundane ones, gives a brilliantly broad view of day to day life, and the reality the soldiers had to deal with.
Visible difference between colourised and orignal parts of image.
A lot of the activities and recollections are a lot more candid and un-PC than you normally get in official accounts, giving a raw portrait of their lives. Alongside the usual stories of mud and gas masks, we also get comments on prostitutes, lice, petrol in the tea, and other unusual details.
If there is a lack of anything, it would be a view from the opposing side, but given this is working with the IWM that isn’t too surprising. Hopefully a German archive could do a similar project to give this angle. This isn’t a criticism of Jackson’s film though, as he has amply delivered on his remit, but more that now we can see what is possible, our minds think about the other perspectives.
What Jackson has achieved with this film is to humanise the people who took part in the war, and to highlight the personal perspective, compared to the standard style overview. It is truly remarkable how vivid and striking the images have become after the transformative process, and they really bring the message home. The soldiers are one step further removed from being statistics and their memories have been honoured immensely.
A fantastic piece of work.
This was a World Premiere at the London Film Festival and should be on wider release shortly.
