"They Shall Not Grow Old" (Peter Jackson, 2018)

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I wrote this on my Facebook page a couple of weeks ago. I'm still seeing the faces of those soldiers in front me. Cannot speak highly enough of the work of Peter Jackson and his team. It will go down in history as one of the all-time greatest and most important documentaries.

"They Shall Not Grow Old" (Documentary, Peter Jackson 2018)



... This is a film that deserves to be seen by as large an audience as possible on the big screen. It is a truly remarkable technical and artistic achievement. The sequences that have been fully restored (that begin about 15 mins. into the film), slowing the film to a normal speed, filling in the necessary missing frames using high-powered computers so as to avoid jerky movement, the colorisation and the addition of sound (sound fx and archive interview audio), bring to life the young men on screen in a way that touched me to the core. It humanises them, which makes all the more moving the dehumanisation we see them undergo as the film (and the war) progresses.

The final 10 mins. in particular brought this home in a way that was at the same time gentle, dignified and unsensationalised, but also profoundly enraging... The most powerful pacifist, antiwar work of art I've ever seen.

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