They Shall Not Grow Old

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

Runtime: 99 minutes

Directed by: Peter Jackson

Starring: This is that World War I documentary Jackson did

From: Released by Warner Bros., but a museum in Great Britain, the BBC and some others also participated

I heard rave reviews for this documentary and as I have rated real highly some fictional World War I films (All Quiet on the Western Front, Westfront 1918) it only made sense for me to attend the Fathom Event screening of this yesterday; I saw the 3D version and while that looked fine, there's no real reason to check this out in 3D, to be frank. After the fact, it's been noticed by me that some did not enjoy the artistic decisions to colorize this footage (from the British archives), blow it up to 1.78.1 and add in voices/sound effects to augment it. I was not offended by that and in fact it helped bring that footage to life. There was obvious footage manipulation and that has better grounds for an argument but even then that did not bother me too much.

The opening act and the final few minutes, the footage is in black and white & proper scale; all through it, there is narration that explains how the soldiers are feeling about things. Of course, all of it was made up to fit the images as this was years before sound was recorded on film... c'est la vie. The story is told in a logical order, starting from soldiers enlisting (some of who were underaged) and them training to them shipping off to the battlefield and getting cold water splashed on their faces by the realities of war; the movie is not afraid to show some gruesome images to fortify this point. By now many people should know (whether from that segment in Wonder Woman or elsewhere) how brutal trench warfare was and why it was so miserable.

While not the cheeriest documentary, I was fascinated with it and appreciated the sacrifices those soldiers made; there is an anti-war slant as it was noted how many of the enemy German soldiers they captured as prisoners of war... they were fine young men themselves. This is not something to watch as a history lesson in all the machinations that happened which resulted in World War I or a listing of the major events that happened. Rather, it was to show the effect that these few years had on many young innocent lads; humanize The Great War, this was the intent and that goal was successfully met.