They Shall Not Grow Old

Peter Jackson deserves all the medals in the world for this outstanding historiographical work. And if you don't know it yet, I would like to emphatically point out that there are 2 versions of the documentary circulating on the internet. One of them is in VHS format 1.33:1, following the pattern of the old footage, so even the coloured, HD-converted and dubbed passages (you will get your first taste of this technical miracle at about the 25th minute) are cropped and therefore not so impressive. The second version is in widescreen format, as originally intended by Peter Jackson, and the final impression of the film will depend a lot on which version you see. The documentary doesn't really bring anything new in terms of information, but I give PJ a thumbs up for the technical sophistication, which is also commemorative of the victims of that terrible war. (09/10/2019)

This is a frighteningly effective rendering of the horrors of war from the perspective of those lucky enough to tell the story. Peter Jackson has restored over a hundred years old footage to take us right there (thanks in no small part to the sound), all with commentary from rank-and-file soldiers. Certainly don't expect a barrage of factual information, that's what other documentaries are for; this one is really about atmosphere, atmosphere, atmosphere, because when one of the soldiers tells how he had to shoot another one, his throat and ours tighten. (02/01/2020)

After making King Kong, Peter Jackson wanted to continue to focus primarily on his video game studio Wingnut Interactive, but things turned out differently, and with virtually every film he's made since Kong, I think how awesome it would have been if his entry into the field of video game design had actually happened. Jackson already works with people purely as objects, bearing distinguishing features based on their specific environment. Where in The Hobbit I admired the attention given to each piece of clothing or the design of the interiors, and suffered at every attempt at a more human rendering of some of the characters, with They Shall Never Grow Old I raised my eyebrows at the effort to supplement silent film footage by dubbing the voices of those involved, painting blood onto bodies with splatter comic sensibilities, or exhibiting an inclination toward the concisely episodic. But when more space is given to a scene where someone falls into a latrine than to explaining the friction between Germans and Prussians in the enemy lines, one can't be surprised that the pretentious final anticatharsis doesn't quite work, because the whole thing feels like someone trying to tell you about their months-long trip around the world, but having only two stops to do so before getting of at their stop. Someone put that guy behind a computer already, let him use his proverbial perfectionism to create NPCs, sounds, and level design for a good PC game, and not try to burden us with painful reality. Which reminds me, judging from the promo reel, I was expecting the technology to revive old footage to be much more advanced than the result would suggest. Even Russian Technicolor films look better and more realistic than what we see here. (23/07/2020)