They Shall Not Grow Old

My great-grandfather fought in World War I with the Gordon Highlanders and was wounded at the Battle of Ypres so I have had a lifelong fascination with this war.  I really wanted to see They Shall Not Grow Old, the Peter Jackson documentary commissioned by the Imperial War Museum to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Armistice Day, but I missed the original screenings for one reason or another.  I was so excited when I found out that it was returning to theaters for a limited engagement and I went to see it yesterday.  It begins with the black and white, silent, and grainy footage that we have all seen before and then transitions into restored and colorized images with recreated sound.  I know that many people are against colorizing old film footage but, to me, this gave the images an immediacy that I had never experienced before, as if these events had happened during my lifetime rather than one hundred years ago.  It is incredibly powerful to see!  The documentary also includes audio of interviews with 120 veterans about their experiences as British soldiers on the western front and these are incredibly moving.  I was struck by several commonalities in the narrative.  First, the men were very eager to enlist because, not only did they want to do their part for king and country, but they also wanted adventure.  Many of them were leaving the villages where they were born for the first time!  Second, most of them didn't complain about the truly horrific conditions in the trenches because they felt they had a job to do and simply got on with it.  Third, they regarded the German prisoners of war as lads just like themselves and started wondering why they were being asked to kill them.  Fourth, most of them reported that there were no celebrations on Armistice Day and many of them wondered what would happen to them now that the war was over.  Several mentioned that they were more concerned about going home than they were about enlisting!  These anonymous voices make the war come alive and I thought of my own great-grandfather many times, especially when the footage included men in kilts and the sound of a plaintive bagpipe.  I highly recommend seeing this extraordinary film while it is still in theaters!