Tracked down the Peter Jackson WW1 documentary They Shall Not Grow Old. It came out at the beginning of the year and has been on various streaming for a few months. I caught it on HBO (free week trial which also gave access to the Watchmen and His Dark Materials tv show… so bonus!).
This is a pretty good documentary that basically just shows historic footage from WW1 with old interview audio from surviving soldiers (I’m not sure when that was recorded since all the soldiers would be dead by now). It’s interesting reminiscence from the soldiers as we see various black and white footage illustrating what they are saying… talking about what it was like when war was declared, joining the army, military gear and food, and training. Then the movie transitions to France and gets colorized, speed corrected, and audio added… and continues to tell the stories of the soldiers in the trenches.
Really, it’s the pretty startling updating of the footage that this movie exists. They had to correct the speed of the footage since it was inconsistent. The cameras at the time weren’t great and were hand-cranked which resulted in varying speeds. The audio is based on historic understandings of the sounds and lip-reading to replicate the speech. It’s pretty impressive as a technical achievement… and as a bit of history brought to life.
I had a class on WW1 in college so a lot of this documentary wasn’t new to me. But it was still interesting and if you aren’t super familiar with life in the trenches, it’s worth a watch.
Score: 84