They Shall Not Grow Old

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years con­demn. At the going down of the sun and in the morn­ing: We will remem­ber them.” Words can some­times seem inad­e­quate when try­ing to sum up an event of the scale and mag­ni­tude of World War One, but this pas­sage from Lau­rence Binyon’s 1914 poem ​‘For the Fall­en’ stands as a poignant affir­ma­tion of the endur­ing grat­i­tude, admi­ra­tion and grief felt by those for whom the ulti­mate sac­ri­fice was made by so many.

In his dis­tinct­ly per­son­al, typ­i­cal­ly daz­zling ode of remem­brance, Peter Jack­son attempts to increase the clar­i­ty and imme­di­a­cy of this time­less sen­ti­ment. But while They Shall Not Grow Old is unde­ni­ably impres­sive on a tech­ni­cal lev­el, it’s debat­able how much he ulti­mate­ly suc­ceeds. For starters, it should not go unno­ticed that the direc­tor inten­tion­al­ly mis­quotes Binyon’s famous stan­za in the film’s title – by doing so he sig­nals an urge to obfus­cate his­tor­i­cal nuance for the sake of his own artis­tic vision. For all the crafts­man­ship and for­mal sophis­ti­ca­tion on dis­play, Jackson’s film does not rep­re­sent a more com­plete pic­ture of the con­flict in question.

It begins with a pre­lude to war. Flick­ery black-and-white images and anec­do­tal voiceover record­ings of numer­ous ex-ser­vice­men reveal a very dif­fer­ent look­ing Britain. We hear vet­er­ans from all walks of life recall­ing their eager­ness to enlist, appar­ent­ly com­pelled not so much by an innate devo­tion to King and Coun­try as the fear of miss­ing out on such a great occa­sion. We see hun­dreds of young men cheer­ful­ly queu­ing out­side recruit­ment sta­tions, all want­i­ng to do their bit. There is a pal­pa­ble sense of excite­ment and ner­vous expec­ta­tion, and it is haunt­ing know­ing that the fate of a large num­ber of them was sealed right there and then.

These ear­ly scenes pro­vide a fas­ci­nat­ing win­dow to the past while con­vey­ing the mood and mind­set of the aver­age Tom­my pri­or to being dis­patched to the bat­tle­fields of main­land Europe. If the uncon­ven­tion­al fram­ing of this por­tion of the film (some­thing akin to peer­ing into a plas­tic 3D viewfind­er) cre­ates dis­tance between sub­ject and view­er, past and present, how­ev­er, the dra­mat­ic aspect ratio shift that occurs rough­ly 15 min­utes in – when the image is mirac­u­lous­ly trans­formed into crisp, full-screen colour – doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly bring things clos­er to home.

The issue is not the footage itself but the implic­it sug­ges­tion that dig­i­tal enhance­ment is essen­tial to the longterm preser­va­tion of the mem­o­ry and lega­cy of the fall­en. In restor­ing, hand-colouris­ing, and adding syn­chro­nised sound to the wealth of mate­r­i­al at his dis­pos­al (some 600 hours of video and 100 hours of audio sourced from the Impe­r­i­al War Museum’s archives), Jack­son brings the expe­ri­ence of fight­ing in the trench­es to life as nev­er before in doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma. His­to­ry did not occur in black-and-white, of course, as Jack­son is evi­dent­ly keen to remind us, yet the sud­den tran­si­tion to colour draws atten­tion to the inher­ent arti­fi­cial­i­ty of his endeav­our. It leaves us con­scious­ly exam­in­ing the process – and ethics – of ren­der­ing real-life human tragedy as glossy spectacle.

That said, this is a huge­ly engag­ing and wor­thy project, filled with extra­or­di­nary tales of cama­raderie, courage and unwa­ver­ing con­vic­tion. There is plen­ty of evi­dence of the stiff-upper-lip spir­it we so read­i­ly asso­ciate with the Great War gen­er­a­tion; even more strik­ing is the humil­i­ty and humour shown in the face of such appalling cir­cum­stances. And it is at once sur­pris­ing and shock­ing to hear sol­diers describe an act as mun­dane as falling in the mud in life-or-death terms. Through­out all this, nei­ther do the inter­vie­wees express the slight­est hint of self-pity, nor does Jack­son project pity onto them. This is the film’s great­est virtue.

Per­haps an oppor­tu­ni­ty for deep­er reflec­tion and under­stand­ing has been missed though. Watch­ing this film, my mind turned to my great-grand­fa­ther, who was a rear gun­ner in the Roy­al Navy and a vet­er­an of both World Wars. Though he died a decade before I was born, I feel a strong con­nec­tion to him and think about him a lot around this time of year. There’s a fad­ed, sepia-tint­ed por­trait I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly fond of in which he’s pos­ing in his white ser­vice uni­form, clutch­ing a half-smoked cig­a­rette and wear­ing a some­what cav­a­lier expres­sion. Would he some­how seem clos­er to me if that pho­to­graph were sharp­er and in colour, its crum­pled edges smoothed out? I’m not so sure.

They Shall Not Grow Old is released in cin­e­mas 9 Novem­ber, and airs on BBC2 this Sun­day at 9:30pm GMT.