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I’ve spent most all my days trying to touch the past. It’s a compulsion, a hunger for a connection. I have been accused by some folk who lack understanding of “living in the past,” but that misses the mark by a country mile. It’s never been about that at all — it’s always about making the past present.
When that connection is made, the moment of frisson is so intense it’s a kind of high. I’ve long since given up trying to explain this, falling back on the line from the old Harley Davidson ads: If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.
Peter Jackson gets it. The Kiwi director has brought the Great War to life as no one ever has before. His film They Shall Not Grow Old is a profound experience, one that Rullman and I shared on December 27 in one of the film’s two theater showings in the U.S. It will surely be released on streaming services and DVD — if you haven’t seen it, you must.
The director of The Lord of the Rings worked some cinematic sorcery to create a unique film document out of footage provided by the UK’s Imperial War Museum. In a five-year epic of technological innovation, Jackson’s team of wizards restored, colorized, and brought to correct speed remarkable footage of an age gone by. Detailed sound effects were added, including the use of forensic lip readers to identify and voice actors to reproduce what men in the film were actually saying.
The result overwrites our dim, grainy, jerky and silent image of the hundred-year-old conflict that shaped the world we live in, and renders it as alive and immediate as events happening now. The past is present.
Rendered so vividly, the personalities and the humanity of the men depicted in the film come through the screen. They are not just our great-grandparents — they’re us. The subjects are all British and Dominion soldiers, but the experience of the trenches of the Western Front was universal — not much different for the Germans, the Americans, the Austrians, the Russians.
That experience, terrifying and horrific as it was, could also be fun, a point that the veterans whose testimony makes the narration of the film raise frequently. The soldiers did not — could not — focus on the horror; they had a job to do and they just “got on with it.” And they ate together and cut up and labored and laughed and lived.
The humanity so clearly on display makes it all the more poignant when Jackson notes in a post-film featurette that the men seen staged in a sunken road at The Somme on July 1, 1916, were almost all killed on the first day of that titanic slaughter. We are seeing these men in their last 30 minutes of life.
Minutes from death on The Somme. Truly, they shall not grow old.
Jackson’s directorial judgment is often questionable — the bloated, bombastic, tone-deaf trilogy of The Hobbit being Exhibit A. But in this work, he made the right call in every case. The narration is taken solely from IWM-archived interviews with World War I veterans. There’s period music, but no dramatic score to set an emotional tone. And the narrative is entirely experiential — no attempt is made to provide context, chronology or any kind of “history lesson.”
The importance of this last is a bit counter-intuitive, but it was absolutely the right course to follow. As Jackson notes:
“It’s not the story of the war; it’s the story of the human experience of fighting in the war.”
By focusing solely on the experience of the trenches, They Shall Not Grow Old lifts the Western Front out of history and punches through the walls of time. The past is present.
Context is important, of course. I recommend pairing They Shall Not Grow Old with Dan Carlin’s hours-long Hardcore History podcast, Blueprint for Armageddon. Carlin cops to being “addicted to context,” and this master class serves up a heaping helping of it. Putting the two together will give you the war in fullness.
Why go there? Why bring all that nastiness into our lives?
Making this dark and disturbing past present is necessary — because it is always present, whether we recognize and acknowledge it or not. The First World War pried open a trapdoor to hell that we haven’t yet been able to slam down and nail shut. The horrors of industrial warfare and the ability and apparent willingness to commit civilizational suicide are with us today, as are ideologies that were planted and grew in the pulverized soil fertilized with the blood and bones of millions of men — zombie ideologies that seem impossible to kill.
The world that blew itself up in 1914 is not so different from our world today, and we are not so different from the people who were caught in the blast radius. That is the truth that They Shall Not Grow Old tells, a truth we ignore at our peril.
*
Matthew says
The great tragedy of the 20th century.
Mordor on the Western Front…
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/opinion/sunday/how-jrr-tolkien-found-mordor-on-the-western-front.html?fbclid=IwAR3OhY7Q9sYyKQOuUPO8u2GfRhRAGwd0TJHGd_ebGBwS-Ip4niLPKziXf0M
TJ says
Thank You!
On the list for the boys and I — been working too much and missed this one. The first one brought a tear to my eyes and the second film doc was fascinating.
Most welcome TJ. I found the experience very emotional — in a variety of ways.
Patrick McGowan says
Very much looking forward to seeing this. As for the mess that was “The Hobbit” I don’t know how much of that was Jackson’s fault in that the Suit’s greed pushed it toward a trilogy and Jackson was burned out. He shouldn’t have done it, plain and simple and would probably admit that. Interesting that his two strongest works are really about the same thing. Thanks for pointing me towards the Times article. Happy New Year.
And to you Patrick. Good to hear from you.
Kevin Kay says
Our neighbor up until a few years ago was a woman from Newfoundland who served a nurse in England during WW2. During my wanderings around Europe in ’89 I stopped in Amiens not knowing the significance at the time. In the cathedral there are stone tablets on the walls dedicated to the soldiers of the different nations who fought near there. I photographed and framed the one dedicated to the Newfoundlanders:
To the Glory of God
And the Honor of the Island
And the men of the Newfoundland Division
Who gave their lives in the First Battle of the Somme (followed by the date)
It brought her to tears and she told me about a village in which all of the men between 17 and 60 had been killed in one battle because, at the time, men from the same place served in the same units. I’m sure that story had many fellows and that is why that policy was changed. I agree that it is necessary to make the past present so that we may know as fully as possible the consequences of our choices. At Dachau a few weeks earlier I thought that it and all such places should be eradicated. I then realized that they had to remain to remind us to never allow that kind of thing to happen ever again. Would that our leaders who decids such things be required to stand in those places.
lane batot says
Not that it could compare with this documentary, but the subject of World War 1(often overshadowed in film by it’s larger, more recent tragic sequel) made me think of that movie “War Horse”, lamblasted by the critics when it came out(but that I went to see anyway), that I rather liked–although it is definitely a harsh film–about World War 1 from a horse’s viewpoint(don’t worry–no talking animals in this one!), back when horses were still very much in use during warfare. Made me want a re-watch, so I JUST ordered(cheapo) a used copy from Amazon–lots of very cheap copies! Sometimes, the inane, often pointless, stupid tragedy of war is best illustrated through the eyes of an innocent animal.….. A book that also does that marvelously(if a real heart-tugger.…) is the wonderful Canadian writer Sheila Burnford(she who wrote the classic “The Incredible Journey”) in her lesser known novel “Bel Ria”, about a gypsy’s poodle and an organ grinder’s monkey in World War 2 torn France–excellent(if harrowing) story(unlikely as it sounds!), illustrating just how important–even during great tragedies–maybe ESPECIALLY in such great tragedies, how intertwined human and animal lives can be.……
Rick Schwertfeger says
What all of us pursuing history, historical novels, historical travel, etc., seek. A reviewer of the writings of the great British travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who wrote three classics of his epic walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople/Istanbul, said that Fermor never could see a landscape without wanting to know what had happened there. A hunger for connection; to make the past present. You nailed it, Jim.
Saddle Tramp says
Jim,
Just left the theatre after seeing the 3D version of THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD including the follow up with Peter Jackson discussing how he went about doing it. Lots of archive remains that would of course be of much interest as well. Only so much of Peter Jackson to go around though. The last time I put on 3D glasses was when I took my oldest son and oldest grandson to see WINGS OF COURAGE at the Science Museum in Union Station in Kansas City in the 1990’s. Both still remain admirers of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Peter Jackson did an admirable job for sure and I will simply let the film speak for itself and only mention that 3D provides everything but the weather and the smell and that is powerful enough. Saw it at the ArcLight here in Pasadena having ducked in from what we in the Midwest call a gully washer. Heading next door to El Cholo for dinner…
Glad you got to see it. Guess the Southland’s getting hammered, eh?
Saddle Tramp says
Yes it is by our standards anyway. Nothing compared to the western front as you know well. Worth getting out to go see it for sure. I am familiar with the restoration work of just straight through old films, but this was a totally different labor of love. It deserves the appreciation for both subject and technical restoration work. Creatively as well…
Patrick McGowan says
Saw It this past Friday at the ArcLight in Pasadena as well. Not in 3D. Excellent, harrowing experience. Sticking with me. As someone referenced above “War Horse” was a unique take as well. I saw the play which had some memorable stage craft for the horse and the battles were very well done. The show itself was a but too commercial for me, but that’s not unusual .