A documentary film of soaring ambition, They Shall Not Grow Old was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London. They chose Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, a WWI-buff who also happens to be an excellent director. After the end credits is a short documentary narrated by Jackson about the making of the money and it is maybe even better than the movie because he's such a nerd and he's funny. They used his uniform collection to match colors in the movie. They use his authentic WWI weaponry for sound in the movie. They use his WWI propaganda collection for stills. The Museum could not have chosen a more apt director. The discussion about the sound and color and lipreading and look of the movie is fascinating. These are soldiers that had never seen a movie camera before, they didn't even know what to do! He went through hundreds of hours of archival footage they had to enhance and archival sound recordings from the BBC. The amount of research that went into this movie is very impressive.
The beginning and end of the movie, the black and white parts outside of the trenches, are excellent. I admit I fell asleep in the colorized trenches portion. Not because it was bad. In the parts I was awake, it was actually stunning. The color pops in 3D like a moving painting. I love the concept of the movie (and the trailer beautifully, perfectly explains it) keeping film alive. I know it's kind of controversial that the footage was given color and sound. But I think it's a brilliant way to breathe new life into this excellent footage that no one would otherwise have seen, some of which was literally unviewable without his digital restoration. Film is meant to be seen.
No comments:
Post a Comment