A Very British First World War

As an unrepentant WWII buff, I really haven’t paid a great deal of attention to its predecessor, WWI or “The Great War,” until recently.  Indeed, the two world wars are connected such that historians often regard WWII as a continuation of WWI (with an interlude called the “Interwar Years” between them) by dint of the fact that WWI ended without resolving its underlying causes after sacrificing an entire generation of young men through four years of hellish, attritional warfare. Only during the last few years with the commemoration of its 100th Anniversary (2014-2018) have I taken a greater interest in the subject.  So when I heard that ‘The Hobbit’ and LOTR director Peter Jackson has released a new documentary on WWI called ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ (I guess ‘Only the Good Die Young’ is too cliché) using restored/enhanced and colorized war footages, I knew I had to give it a gander.

 

TSNGO is very much a labor of love and tribute from Jackson to his grandfather (and two other relatives) who fought in the war.  It is also the best documentary to date on WWI in terms of picture and sound quality, as countless hours were spent to improve the visual sharpness, clarity, contrast, fidelity and other qualities of the numerous archive footages available, much of which have degraded or faded with time.  Jackson's intent wasn’t to paint WWI in broad strokes even though there are enough material to do so.  He wanted to make it a more “personal” story from the POV of the PBI, or Poor Bloody Infantry.  So he made TSNGO a focused treatment of WWI which captures the reality and immediacy of the war to the actual men who fought in it.

 

This is the right approach and the film succeeded brilliantly.  Think of TSNGO as an “oral history” of WWI on the big screen.  Narrated by a handful of British veterans who survived the war, we really get a sense of how this tragic war unfolded viscerally through their experiences.  Jackson masterfully and smoothly edited the film, employing not only selective zoomed-in/panned archive footages and stills but also sketch drawings to immerse us into the story.  One thing TSNGO thankfully doesn’t have is interviews with people (either veterans or historians) sitting in chairs or talking heads, because that’s the last thing we want.  As such, TSNGO is more accessible and interesting to the general audience who may not be a history buff or armchair general.

Grade: A