They Shall Not Grow Old

NZ/GB © 2018 Imperial War Museum. PC: WingNut Films. Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and Imperial War Museum in association with the BBC. Executive Produced by House Productions. Distr: Warner Bros. Pictures. P: Clare Olssen, Peter Jackson.
    D: Peter Jackson. M: Plan 9. ED: Jabez Olssen.
    A montage film based on WWI footage at the Imperial War Museum and oral history recordings at the BBC.
    Music selections include vintage songs popular during the era such as:
– "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" (Jack Judge, Harry Williams, 1912)
– "Oh! It's a Lovely War" (J. P. Long, Maurice Scott, 1917)
– "Mademoiselle from Armentières" (Harry Carlton, Joseph Tunbridge, originally from the 1830s, WWI lyrics probably 1915, first recording 1915)
    Filmed on location in World War I.
    Dedicated: For My Grandfather Sgt. William Jackson
    Released in 2D and 3D.
    Release dates: 16 October 2018 (London Film Festival), 9 November 2018 (United Kingdom), 17 December 2018 (United States).
    99 min
    DCP viewed at a Espoo Ciné press screening at Cinema Orion, Helsinki, 24 April 2019.

Official introduction: "On the centenary of the end of First World War, Academy Award-winner Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) presents the World Premiere of an extraordinary new work showing the Great War as you have never seen it."

"This unique film brings into high definition the human face of the First World War as part of a special London Film Festival presentation alongside a live Q&A with director Peter Jackson hosted by Mark Kermode."

"Using state of the art technology to restore original archival footage which is more than a 100-years old, Jackson brings to life the people who can best tell this story: the men who were there. Driven by a personal interest in the First World War, Jackson set out to bring to life the day-to-day experience of its soldiers. After months immersed in the BBC and Imperial War Museums’ archives, narratives and strategies on how to tell this story began to emerge for Jackson. Using the voices of the men involved, the film explores the reality of war on the front line; their attitudes to the conflict; how they ate; slept and formed friendships, as well what their lives were like away from the trenches during their periods of downtime."

"Jackson and his team have used cutting edge techniques to make the images of a hundred years ago appear as if they were shot yesterday. The transformation from black and white footage to colourised footage can be seen throughout the film revealing never before seen details. Reaching into the mists of time, Jackson aims to give these men voices, investigate the hopes and fears of the veterans, the humility and humanity that represented a generation changed forever by a global war." (Official introduction)

AA: Peter Jackson brings an experimental approach to the hundred-year-old subgenre of the WWI compilation feature film. Jay Leyda discusses this subgenre in Films Beget Films (1964) as the starting point of the very phenomenon of the montage film – films based solely on pre-existing footage.

Now with digital transfers, computer colorization, and cropping from 1,33 to 1,85 the imagery certainly looks different. Jackson's film has also been made available in 3D, but I saw the 2D version.

This project has been hugely beneficial in professional archival terms: 100 hours of WWI footage has been digitized in high resolution during the project.

They Shall Not Grow Old became a big phenomenon in 2018, the centenary of the WWI armistice,  in honour of the memory of those who gave their lives and suffered during WWI.

xxx

I belong to a special audience category because I have followed WWI centenary film series for five years, starting from pacifist pre-war visions such as Ned med Vaabnene! / Lay Down Your Arms! / Waffen nieder! (1914) based on the novel by Bertha von Suttner via a screenplay by Carl Th. Dreyer.

I have also studied the European Film Gateway portal EFG 1914 with a massive collection of contemporary footage from the WWI period.

Five years ago I tended to support the view of the historian Marc Ferro who stated that no non-fiction films could compete with the best fictional accounts of the Great War. The non-fiction records were usually made for military or government propaganda purposes. They showed parades of our victorious troops marching into the ruins of occupied cities.

But accounts of other aspects of the war have emerged, including documentaries of the rehabilitation of war invalids, legless, armless, blind, faceless... And accounts of millions of war orphans. Yet the unheard-of massacre in industrial scale characteristic of WWI has been best conveyed in fictional masterpieces such as Les Croix de bois. An account of the callous Machiavellism of the military command was certainly absent from official newsreels, and was portrayed only in exposés such as Paths of Glory.

Speaking of glory, the lesson of WWI was indeed that there was no glory in war.

xxx

Peter Jackson is not shy in portraying violence on the screen. He debuted in the cinema as a maestro of gore and splatter with Bad Taste, Meet the Feebles and Braindead. He would be the perfect choice to make a fictional movie about WWI, the home of gore and splatter. Horror film as a genre truly blossomed in the wake of WWI, and horror cinema was one of the key reflections of WWI both in Weimar Germany and in the phenomenon known as Universal Horror.

Jackson does portray the slaughter of the war but remains dependent on the official propaganda character of much of his source material. We learn in the conclusion that the war was of a magnitude beyond comprehension and that there was a wall of silence because people never talked about the war. But the film does not convey this with full dramatical, physical and visceral impact.

xxx

An artist is free to experiment with found footage, and Jackson has used his freedom. In the beginning and the end we see footage reduced to small size, presented in accelerated speed which makes movement look ridiculous, and played with a whirring sound evoking a film projector.

At about 9 minutes of screen time the speed returns to natural while the image grows to full screen size, but that size is 1,85:1 (reduced from the original 1,33:1) which means that the footage is cropped from the top and the bottom. The footage has also been computer-colorized in a procedure that was fashionable in the 1980s. Technically today's computer colorization is superior but the aesthetical concerns remain.

I am not a purist. All these changes have been conducted with supreme skill and taste. But personally I would prefer a straight version in glorious black and white, all natural speed, all in the original aspect ratio.

xxx

The soundtrack consists of a symposium of voices from BBC's oral history archive. The storytellers are not identified during the course of the movie, but they are named in the end credits.

They Shall Not Grow Old is an impressionistic film. The film focuses on the eye level experience. We are often lost in chaos, lost in combat. We do not get a general view of WWI nor a vision of the course of the war. This is a film about the minutiae, not the big picture. But certainly this is a distinguished film and an inspiration to learn more.

xxx

P.S. 17 May 2019. I visited The Nitrate Picture Show in Rochester two weeks ago and listened to the amazing introductory lecture by David Walsh, a veteran of The Imperial War Museum and one of the most distinguished representatives of the international film archive community. His presentation was for me the highlight of the festival. One of Walsh's topics was They Shall Not Grow Old. It turns out that the digital manipulation of the image is more thorough than might be imagined. When skies were cleared, birds disappeared. Elements of the image were digitally removed, buildings were replaced, and compositions were altered, even when there was no particular reason. The movie is a digital reconstruction to such an extent that its documentary credentials are questionable.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM WIKIPEDIA:
BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: FROM WIKIPEDIA:

They Shall Not Grow Old is a 2018 documentary film directed and produced by Peter Jackson. The film was created using original footage of World War I from the Imperial War Museum's archives, most of it previously unseen, alongside audio from BBC and IWM interviews of British servicemen who fought in the conflict. Most of the footage has been colorized and transformed with modern production techniques, with the addition of sound effects and voice acting to be more evocative and feel closer to the soldiers' actual experiences.

It is Jackson's first documentary as director, although he directed the mockumentary Forgotten Silver in 1995 and produced the West Memphis Three documentary West of Memphis in 2012. Jackson, whose grandfather (to whom the film is dedicated) fought in the war, intended for the film to be an immersive experience of "what it was like to be a soldier" rather than a story or a recount of events. The crew reviewed 600 hours of interviews from 200 veterans and 100 hours of original film footage to make the film. The title was inspired by the line "They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old" from the 1914 poem "For the Fallen" by Laurence Binyon, famous for being used in the Ode of Remembrance.

They Shall Not Grow Old premiered simultaneously at the BFI London Film Festival and in selected theaters in the UK on 16 October 2018, before airing on BBC Two on 11 November 2018 (the hundredth anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918); it received a limited US release on 17 December. Following its box office success, the film received a wide theatrical release in February 2019. It was acclaimed by critics for its restoration work, immersive atmosphere and portrayal of war, and earned a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.

Contents

Production
The film was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and Imperial War Museums in association with the BBC, who approached Jackson in 2015 for the project. According to Jackson, the crew of They Shall Not Grow Old reviewed 600 hours of interviews from the BBC and the IWM, and 100 hours of original film footage from the IWM to make the film. The interviews came from 200 veterans, with the audio from 120 of them being used in the film. After receiving the footage, Jackson decided that the movie would not feature traditional narration and that it would instead only feature audio excerpts of the soldiers talking about their war memories, in order to make the film about the soldiers themselves; for the same reason, it barely features any dates or named locations.
"This is not a story of the First World War, it is not a historical story, it may not even be entirely accurate but it's the memories of the men who fought - they're just giving their impressions of what it was like to be a soldier."

—Peter Jackson at the film's premiere.

Jackson stated: "We made a decision not to identify the soldiers as the film happened. There were so many of them that names would be popping up on the screen every time a voice appeared. In a way it became an anonymous and agnostic film. We also edited out any references to dates and places, because I didn’t want the movie to be about this day here or that day there. There’s hundreds of books about all that stuff. I wanted the film to be a human experience and be agnostic in that way. [...] I didn’t want individual stories about individuals. I wanted it to be what it ended up being: 120 men telling a single story. Which is: what was it like to be a British soldier on the western front?" In another interview, he stated "[The men] saw a war in colour, they certainly didn’t see it in black and white. I wanted to reach through the fog of time and pull these men into the modern world, so they can regain their humanity once more – rather than be seen only as Charlie Chaplin-type figures in the vintage archive film." Jackson's own paternal grandfather, Sgt. William Jackson, to whom the film is dedicated, was British and fought in World War I; Peter grew up with his father telling him his grandfather's war stories. Jackson stated that after making the film, he now had "a greater understanding of what my grandfather would have gone through".

Jackson did not receive any fee for the making of the film. Although only a small part of it was used, Jackson's crew visually restored all 100 hours of footage the Imperial War Museums sent them for free, "just to get their archive in better shape".

It was produced by WingNut Films with House Productions as executive producers and was supported by the UK's National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Music

The music was composed by New Zealand trio Plan 9, consisting of David Donaldson, Steve Roche and Janet Roddick.

The closing credits of the film feature an extended version of the song "Mademoiselle from Armentières", which was particularly popular during the war. Jackson decided late in the production to use the song and there was little time to assemble the performers. Rather than have non-British men try to sing in British accents, native speakers in service to the UK government were recruited from the British High Commission in New Zealand.

Release

The film premiered on 16 October 2018 as a Special Presentation at the BFI London Film Festival, in the presence of Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, while also being released in several selected theaters across the country; copies were also sent to UK schools the same day. The film was simultaneously screened in 2D and 3D at cinemas, schools and special venues across the UK. The simulcast included a special post-screening Q&A with Jackson, hosted by film critic Mark Kermode.

The film was broadcast on BBC Two on 11 November 2018, the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. To accompany the film, a special episode of the documentary series What Do Artists Do All Day? which followed Peter Jackson making the film aired the following day on BBC Four.

The film received a special United States release through Fathom Events in 2D and 3D, on 17 and 27 December 2018. Warner Bros. will launch a theatrical release in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, on 11 January 2019 and plans to expand to 25 markets on 1 February. Because it missed the 1 October 2018 filing deadline, the film was deemed ineligible for consideration for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature at the 91st Academy Awards; because it is still a 2018 film, it will also be ineligible for the ceremony the following year.

Reception

Box office

They Shall Not Grow Old has grossed $17.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $1.7 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $19.6 million.

In the United States, the film was screened as part of a one-day presentation through Fathom Events on December 17, 2018 and grossed $2.3 million, setting a record for a documentary showing through the company. Encore screenings were held on December 27, making $3.4 million from two showtimes at 1,122 theaters. It was the highest-grossing single-day total ever for a documentary playing via Fathom, and one of the top-grossing single-day presentations of any kind from the company. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the film grossed an additional $2.6 million from 1,335 theaters. The film had a general release in 735 theaters on February 1, 2019 and made $2.4 million, finishing 10th.

Critical response

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 124 reviews, with an average rating of 8.66/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "An impressive technical achievement with a walloping emotional impact, They Shall Not Grow Old pays brilliant cinematic tribute to the sacrifice of a generation." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating based on reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 91 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Giving the film a perfect five-star rating, Peter Bradshaw in his review for The Guardian called the film "a visually staggering thought experiment", saying "The effect is electrifying. The soldiers are returned to an eerie, hyperreal kind of life in front of our eyes, like ghosts or figures summoned up in a seance. The faces are unforgettable. [...] The details are harrowing, as is the political incorrectness of what the soldiers recall: some express their candid enjoyment of the war, others their utter desensitisation to what they experienced."

Guy Lode of Variety called the film "a technical dazzler with a surprisingly humane streak", stating "if They Shall Not Grow Old is head-spinning for its jolting animation of creakily shot battle scenes — tricked out with ingeniously integrated sound editing and seamlessly retimed from 13 frames a second to 24 — its greatest revelation isn’t one of sound and fury. Rather, it’s the film’s faces that stick longest in the mind. Through the exhaustive transformation completed by Jackson’s team, visages that were all but indistinguishably blurred in the archives take on shape, character and creases of worry, terror and occasional hilarity. In conjunction with the film’s intricately stitched narration, its soldiers turn from cold statistics to warm, quivering human beings, drawing us with renewed empathy into a Great War that, they all but unanimously agree, had precious little greatness to it."

Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter stated that the film "suggests new cinematic methods of rescuing history from history books, humanizing and dramatizing true stories with a modest injection of movie-world artifice. Some critics may object to how Jackson streamlines and elides real events, stripping away specifics while offering no broader socio-political comment on the war. But as a immersive primer on the first-hand experiences of British soldiers, this innovative documentary is a haunting, moving and consistently engaging lesson in how to bring the past vividly alive." Mike McCahill of IndieWire gave the film a B grade, considering that "the filmmaker's extensive restoration project doesn't always provide new insights, but it succeeds at creating a fresh look at the horrors of WWI."