They Shall Not Grow Old

JKerova1

Anyone going to see this during its limited run over the weekend?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdY-1u-rk_M

Electric Nitwit

JKerova1 wrote: »

Anyone going to see this during its limited run over the weekend?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdY-1u-rk_M

I'll be settling for the TV, it's on BBC2 on Sunday night. It sounds extraordinary

Guy:Incognito

Was keeping an eye out for this. Didn't realise it was getting a release. Booked for Dundrum tomorrow with the young lad.

Charles Babbage

Some of the scenes probably over the top.

johnny_ultimate

Strange little experiment - fundamentally misguided in some respects, but definitely can be a vivid experience at times.

As a documentary, it's not a whole lot to write home about - it's all fairly straightforward, albeit with the incessant voiceover growing rather monotonous over the course of the film. For a film with so many stories and voices, it's an oddly anonymous, impersonal experience - it often zooms in on soldiers' faces, but in ways that seem disconnected to the narration. That said, the casual language does give a grounded, accessible perspective to the horrors of trench life, and it doesn't shy away from the bloody, miserable reality.

As for the 'enhanced' visuals... I mean, it's a fundamental act of sacrilege, distorting the images so radically. The colourisation is technically impressive, but not 100% there - there's tonnes of distracting digital noise in the images, and a persistent uncanny valley effect. But when it works, it's definitely striking. I don't believe it's necessarily necessary to 'enhance' the archive footage - I think what exists speaks for itself. But in many moments it's hard to dispute that the footage takes on a weird, surreal new life that's never quite perfect but undoubtedly bold.

Again, it's best viewed as an experiment - a flawed one, but a curious one too.

Tony EH

Saw it at the weekend.

Mixed opinions about it. On the one hand it's nice to see a colour representative of images I've been looking at since I was a child. On the other, the colour in these colourised photos and film never seem quite right. It's always a pastel shade, very soft and very unrealistic. They got the colour of the German uniforms woefully wrong too. Although, in one scene showing MK I tanks crossing a short ravine, it did look as though it was shot very recently and was really impressive.

As far as the history was concerned, it was nothing that I hadn't heard or read many times before. So, it was really just retreading well worn areas for me personally.

It was also a bit too focused on the "oh what a lovely war" aspect of trench life and too many commenters were saying that it wasn't that bad. That may have been true for the few lads on the mic at the time of the interview. But, there are tons of other interviews with other fellas that would tell you a very different story indeed. But, I suppose in contrast with having to actually attack an enemy trench, sitting around in your own trench would seem idyllic.

Over all, it was an interesting exercise, but not an altogether successful one.

p to the e

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Strange little experiment - fundamentally misguided in some respects, but definitely can be a vivid experience at times.

As a documentary, it's not a whole lot to write home about - it's all fairly straightforward, albeit with the incessant voiceover growing rather monotonous over the course of the film. For a film with so many stories and voices, it's an oddly anonymous, impersonal experience - it often zooms in on soldiers' faces, but in ways that seem disconnected to the narration. That said, the casual language does give a grounded, accessible perspective to the horrors of trench life, and it doesn't shy away from the bloody, miserable reality.

As for the 'enhanced' visuals... I mean, it's a fundamental act of sacrilege, distorting the images so radically. The colourisation is technically impressive, but not 100% there - there's tonnes of distracting digital noise in the images, and a persistent uncanny valley effect. But when it works, it's definitely striking. I don't believe it's necessarily necessary to 'enhance' the archive footage - I think what exists speaks for itself. But in many moments it's hard to dispute that the footage takes on a weird, surreal new life that's never quite perfect but undoubtedly bold.

Again, it's best viewed as an experiment - a flawed one, but a curious one too.

Caught it on BBC2 during the week and this was pretty much my take away from it. As a documentary I felt it was lacking and just showed an extremely small sliver of a very complex war. In fact I thought it really romanticised the war. Lot's of talk of "we just got on with it" and "what an adventure".

As an interesting experiment in redeveloping old footage I thought it looked amazing. Some scenes didn't quite work but the ones that did blew me away. We're so used to seeing the rickety, pock marked footage that the remastered footage just looks surreal. For me it really hammered home just how bad the conditions of the trenches were. Also it certainly didn't do any positive advertisements for British dentistry.