In the case of Peter Jackson's They Shall Not Grow Old, it's difficult, maybe even impossible, to separate the artfulness of this restoration from the specific narrative at hand. Of course, the intersection of technique and story is Film Studies 101, but we're talking about something completely different here, a revolutionary example of archival footage being molded into a living organism worthy of awe and reverence. It's a process so pain-staking that it practically takes center stage in the film, often overshadowing the tale of collective experience chiseled from the remains of century-old war footage. In the theatrical edition shown across the nation (first as a Fathom event, later as a wide release), the film even ends with 30 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage, documenting how Jackson and his team brought World War I to life over the course of several years. It's remarkable stuff, and you'd be forgiven for finding it more interesting than the actual documentary.
But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't consider how such meticulous methods influenced an uncommonly ambitious project, and the substantial overlap between Jackson's re-contextualization of historical documents and his attempt at blurring the line between individual memory and a unified experience is worth examining. For those who don't know much about this endeavor, They Shall Not Grow Old zeroes in on the average British soldiers of World War I, following their plight from the brutality of the trenches to the subdued celebration of the armistice. Modern faces are nowhere to be found, as Jackson fashions the entire film as a combination of interview recordings and restored footage, drawing associations between these haunting discussions and the disturbing images.
The first 20 minutes of the documentary are fairly unremarkable, touching on the oft-discussed naivete of soldiers entering a war that quickly surpassed anyone's expectations. All of the early footage is in black-and-white, but eventually, Jackson's unbelievable approach announces its arrival in a bold new way. What separates They Shall Not Grow Old from the dozens of war documentaries to debut in theaters each year is the nature of the restoration, which forced Jackson and his team to colorize the footage for a modern audience.
When the images of the battlefield shift from black-and-white to vibrant color, it's like stepping in a whole new world, where we can see atrocities and camaraderie in a whole new light. But beyond the Herculean task of carefully colorizing enough footage to compile a full-length documentary, Jackson repeatedly emphasizes the additional demands of bringing this decaying film to life in the behind-the-scenes material. The team was required to find dialogue to match the lip movements of the soldiers, further creating a kind of historical reality that we've never really seen before.
But once Jackson gives everyone time to settle into this striking vision of the past, the tension between awe and monotony creeps up in a strange way. The restoration is beyond amazing, even if the structure of the film itself almost encourages the viewer to slip into a lull; your jaw has dropped and your eyes are dazzled, but now what? They Shall Not Grow Old mixes this footage with distinctly British voices that all blend together (the film does indeed have a rather myopic focus on soldiers from the United Kingdom, a limitation Jackson justifies in the behind-the-scenes clips), removing the singular journey of an individual soldier and creating something more universal. Near the end, one soldier says that everyone involved in the war had the same experience, and this is a fact that the film attempts to echo.
Still, the flatness of this auditory and visual repetition becomes somewhat tiresome after a while, leaving the viewer to reckon with their own occasional indifference to the story at hand. I personally almost felt a bit guilty whenever I found my mind drifting- how could I be restless so quickly after first seeing history in such a new way? In the end, the best way to process They Shall Not Grow Old is to accept that the reaction of awe is only half the story, a fleeting response that will fade as soon as you're immersed in this. The other half takes the form of a question: why? Jackson's discussion of his techniques inspires as much astonishment as the footage itself, but beyond the notion of bringing added detail to old clips, what is the exact reason for re-purposing the Imperial War Museum's collection in such a drastic way?
The structure and the nature of the footage gives us the answer, even if Jackson never spells it out in specific terms. The first 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes are presented in a black-and-white, letter-boxed format, leaving the events immediately preceding and following the war in a kind of historical haze. This is where Jackson's intense focus on a sliver of collective experience asserts itself, as the pairing of the painterly, almost expressionistic flavor of the colorized footage and the traumatic voice-over of the soldiers creates a sense of tactile, vivid intensity. The footage is still stuck in the haze of the past, but the pain and horror of the trenches demands a novel technique, a process that can grant access to memories that should be inaccessible.
When the new technologies and the strangely subdued execution are all taken into consideration, Jackson's careful attention to reinvigorating the horror of a national experience cements They Shall Not Grow Old as a true achievement. The color fades into black-and-white and so do the nightmares of the war, but Jackson's method has granted us the chance to see the past in a way that was previously far out of our reach. It's harrowing, and it'll likely remain an essential document for students of the war.
THE FINAL GRADE: B+ (7.8/10)
Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
But I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't consider how such meticulous methods influenced an uncommonly ambitious project, and the substantial overlap between Jackson's re-contextualization of historical documents and his attempt at blurring the line between individual memory and a unified experience is worth examining. For those who don't know much about this endeavor, They Shall Not Grow Old zeroes in on the average British soldiers of World War I, following their plight from the brutality of the trenches to the subdued celebration of the armistice. Modern faces are nowhere to be found, as Jackson fashions the entire film as a combination of interview recordings and restored footage, drawing associations between these haunting discussions and the disturbing images.
The first 20 minutes of the documentary are fairly unremarkable, touching on the oft-discussed naivete of soldiers entering a war that quickly surpassed anyone's expectations. All of the early footage is in black-and-white, but eventually, Jackson's unbelievable approach announces its arrival in a bold new way. What separates They Shall Not Grow Old from the dozens of war documentaries to debut in theaters each year is the nature of the restoration, which forced Jackson and his team to colorize the footage for a modern audience.
When the images of the battlefield shift from black-and-white to vibrant color, it's like stepping in a whole new world, where we can see atrocities and camaraderie in a whole new light. But beyond the Herculean task of carefully colorizing enough footage to compile a full-length documentary, Jackson repeatedly emphasizes the additional demands of bringing this decaying film to life in the behind-the-scenes material. The team was required to find dialogue to match the lip movements of the soldiers, further creating a kind of historical reality that we've never really seen before.
But once Jackson gives everyone time to settle into this striking vision of the past, the tension between awe and monotony creeps up in a strange way. The restoration is beyond amazing, even if the structure of the film itself almost encourages the viewer to slip into a lull; your jaw has dropped and your eyes are dazzled, but now what? They Shall Not Grow Old mixes this footage with distinctly British voices that all blend together (the film does indeed have a rather myopic focus on soldiers from the United Kingdom, a limitation Jackson justifies in the behind-the-scenes clips), removing the singular journey of an individual soldier and creating something more universal. Near the end, one soldier says that everyone involved in the war had the same experience, and this is a fact that the film attempts to echo.
Still, the flatness of this auditory and visual repetition becomes somewhat tiresome after a while, leaving the viewer to reckon with their own occasional indifference to the story at hand. I personally almost felt a bit guilty whenever I found my mind drifting- how could I be restless so quickly after first seeing history in such a new way? In the end, the best way to process They Shall Not Grow Old is to accept that the reaction of awe is only half the story, a fleeting response that will fade as soon as you're immersed in this. The other half takes the form of a question: why? Jackson's discussion of his techniques inspires as much astonishment as the footage itself, but beyond the notion of bringing added detail to old clips, what is the exact reason for re-purposing the Imperial War Museum's collection in such a drastic way?
The structure and the nature of the footage gives us the answer, even if Jackson never spells it out in specific terms. The first 20 minutes and the last 10 minutes are presented in a black-and-white, letter-boxed format, leaving the events immediately preceding and following the war in a kind of historical haze. This is where Jackson's intense focus on a sliver of collective experience asserts itself, as the pairing of the painterly, almost expressionistic flavor of the colorized footage and the traumatic voice-over of the soldiers creates a sense of tactile, vivid intensity. The footage is still stuck in the haze of the past, but the pain and horror of the trenches demands a novel technique, a process that can grant access to memories that should be inaccessible.
When the new technologies and the strangely subdued execution are all taken into consideration, Jackson's careful attention to reinvigorating the horror of a national experience cements They Shall Not Grow Old as a true achievement. The color fades into black-and-white and so do the nightmares of the war, but Jackson's method has granted us the chance to see the past in a way that was previously far out of our reach. It's harrowing, and it'll likely remain an essential document for students of the war.
THE FINAL GRADE: B+ (7.8/10)
Image courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
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