They Shall Not Grow Old [Blu-ray] [2018]

Fantastic dvd but sad at the same timeIf u love history then this is a must getLive on ww1 trenches

I was mesmerised by this fabulously renovated film. A full film of around 1 hour and 40 minuets. The old films speed is brought down to a normal run with colour enhancement. Lip readers allow for actors to incert dialogue so that we know what these men a saying. There is even the white noise of battle around the front. A superb piece of work.

I had a great uncle who was killed on the first day of the battle of The Somme and my grandfather was seriously injured twice. On both occasions he was patched up and sent back to the front line. He was awarded the Military Medal and Bar. He never talked about this but as he grew older he had the most awful nightmares and we would hear him screaming. He lived well into his 90s. He joined up when he was 17. All those years living with those memories.This film really brought it home to me just what he must have been through and the horrors he must have seen.The thing that really distressed me were the voices of the men saying that no one was interested in their experiences when they came home. They were expected to get on with their lives but very little help to find jobs. No help with PTSD or shell shock as it was called. There was starvation and there were suicides.The cinematography is incredible. It is horrific to watch but I needed to see it. They fought a bitter war but didn't really understand why.For many of these young men, this war continued for the rest of their lives. And no one cared.It's a story of real people and their lives and it needed to be seen and heard. I won't forget it.

Even taking away the colourisation of the film itself and the voices added for effect, listening to the stories interwoven with the footage is heartbreaking, the dead bodies littering the fields of war a painful reminder of the human costs not felt by those who declare war in the first place.The fact that most recollections recall both how brave the Germans were in the trenches and how nice the surrendered soldiers were and their joint desire for it to all just be over.This is an appalling and ugly reminder that wars are not romantic and death is an almost inevitable outcome for most of the participants, we should never forget the horrific price paid by young men who lied about their ages to fight for the honour of their country and for the lives they were leaving behind to be able to carry on as they always had.This is such an essential watch for those who cannot understand due to the distance of time what war was like when we started becoming really good at killing each other, horrific and heroic in equal measure this really is a tragic and fascinating look back at a time that I pray is never to come around again.

First hand audio accounts, film footage and print reporting masterfully woven together into an account of the continuum of the war, from the summer days of 1914, when most men in the street didn't think there would be a war, leading up to its outbreak and all the way to the despondency and disappointment of demobbed soldiers in a post war peace that seemed to treat them as mere shadows. In these days of overblown hyperbole, this really is a 'must watch'.

A solid documentary

Peter Jackson’s deep interest in the First World War is widely known and includes his Vintage Aviator company restoring/rebuilding classic aircraft from the period, and his Wingnut Wings company. This astounding film is impossible to over-praise and worthy of every superlative bestowed upon it: the focus is very specifically the experiences of British Army volunteers, and later some conscripts, on the western front from 1914-18 and we see WW1 through their eyes and memories.Jackson selects from hundreds of hours of veterans’ recollections recorded in the 1960s and stored in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, and uses these voices as the narrative soundtrack to the film. These recollections cover recruitment, training, fighting and R&R on the western front, and mixed with the squalor and matter-of-fact accounts of death and injuries is a surprisingly large dose of humour. Many survivors state that they are actually glad they went through these experiences which were the defining events of their lives.The meticulous film restoration and colourization is what brings the war to life. Restorations of this quality which are obviously now possible – with enough care, patience and expertise - point the way to a future film landscape bringing more immediacy to countless miles of surviving archive film from the early 20th century.Whether you see ‘They Shall Not Grow Old’ in 2D or 3D (a minority of reviewers seem obsessively hung-up on the current unavailability of Jackson’s 3D version), this is a film like no other and should be seen. It’s a truly epic and deeply moving piece of work which engages attention from start to finish. Bravo, Mr. Jackson: you are one of New Zealand’s national treasures.