They Shall Not Grow Old
Directed by Peter Jackson
Filmmaker Peter Jackson “deserves more than an Oscar; he deserves a medal,” said Rich Lowry in NationalReview.com. To create his “astonishing” new World War I documentary, the Lord of the Rings director spent five years restoring and colorizing century-old archival footage of British soldiers in the trenches on the Western Front. Jackson slowed down the jumpy, sped-up footage—which had been filmed using handcranked cameras—and hired forensic lip-readers in order to dub in dialogue. The result is “the most memorable film of the past year,” said Adam Gopnik in NewYorker.com. On the heels of its very limited December debut, it will enjoy additional
one-night screenings on Jan. 21 and Feb. 1. And “it should be— must be—seen.” In its depiction of combat, “the movie is powerful but never prurient, cutting between shots of young men mugging and clowning and brief, awful still frames of their mangled corpses, flesh rotting away, skulls exploded like eggshells,” said Chris Klimek in NPR.org. The only voice-over narration is drawn from interviews of veterans recorded decades after the fighting ended, and that, too, serves Jackson’s purpose, “all but erasing the barrier of time.” Though this isn’t a movie that will end all wars,
“as a work of ethical, empathetic exhumation,
They Shall Not Grow Old is a model.”