They Shall Not Grow Old
For They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson and his team his team got their hands on archival footage from WWI, then used computers to colorize, clean up, and speed-correct the film to make it more realistic. With the addition of narration from veterans recorded by the BBC years later and some unobtrusive, newly recorded foley, the documentary gives us a fresh, immersive look at images from more than a century ago. It by and large looks incredible. Better still, it’s an effective documentary in its own right, telling a cohesive and emotional story about the soldiers’ experience on the ground, contrasting unaltered film in scenes filmed in Britain with Jackson’s transformed footage for the theater of war on the continent.
by Ned Lannamann