“They Shall Not Grow Old”

At the urging of a fellow veteran I searched and found a theater that was showing this unique documentary. It was well worth the effort.

Peter Jackson, best known for the “Lord of the Rongs” Trilogy and “The Hobbit” Trilogy took on this monumental project more than four years before its release. He and his partner, Fran Walsh lost ancestors in the Great War. As such, they each had a keen interest in making this one of a kind documentary. The Imperial War Museum entrusted more than 100 hours of film and over 600 hours of audio from the Western Front and interviews with soldiers who had fought there.

The painstaking effort made by Jackson and his talented team is nothing short of incredible. As you can imagine, despite being stored carefully, the quality of this 100 year old footage is not great. Time takes its toll on this old technology. The genius of Jackson and his crew made what seemed impossible reality.

Using modern day techniques and some likely invented on the fly, they succeeded in setting the speed of the movement of soldiers to what today’s filming would have captured. In order to further enrich the viewing they went on to meticulously colorize much of it. This enabled Jackson to match the actual colors of the battlefields and grass meadows and pastures. Jackson personally visited the sites and took thousands of photos to capture the exact colors for the process.

The original filming was done with hand cranked cameras and most of the soldiers had never seen such contraptions and often just peer quizzically at the camera lens. You can see the soldiers chatting throughout, but of course the film was silent. Jackson set out to determine what they were saying. He hired top lip readers to decipher dialogue and had it dubbed in as appropriate, It’s an amazing effect.

The making of this film certainly displays the genius of its makers. Beyond that it starkly displays the horror of this war. More than a million British and Empire soldiers died during this bitter conflict. Scenes of captured German soldiers having cordial interactions with their captors brings home the humanity of the foot soldiers on both sides.

Jackson is not intent on making any political statement here, but rather bringing to life an important time in history. He does so in masterful fashion.

If yo have the opportunity, see this film.

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