To learn more about the times of the First World War, our history teacher recommended watching the film “They Will Never Get Older.”
In the beginning, it was not particularly interesting to watch, the narrator, although fascinatingly told about everyday life in those days, too much time was devoted to preparing soldiers for combat operations.
Although I am not a fan of war movies, it was unexpected to see such detailed accuracy of the events of the time. I liked the fact that the narrator of this film was a direct participant in the First World War, which made the actions that were taking place more frightening and intimidating. Horrifying scenes of shooting of soldiers, wars in the trenches inspire fear in every viewer. What really upset me is that for all the exploits of the heroes of this film, when they returned to their home, they were met without a share of heroism and pride, as if there was no feat at all. The state did not try to take any measures to contain our heroes.
Also, one of the main drawbacks for me is the constant, almost uninterrupted flow of speech, which is very tiresome for the beholder. But I want to say that the visual of the film is chosen correctly and it conveys all the horror through the screen.
Personally, this film made a strange impression on me, but I would recommend it to those who are not familiar with the theme of the First World War. this work of cinema deserves maximum appreciation at least due to the accuracy of historical facts and the correct transmission of that frightening atmosphere, but I personally found a couple of minuses, so
This film uses pleasant, non-monotonic diction, calm timbre of voice, which is well stored in memory, not missed even the most insignificant details of what happened. I did not like only the first 25 minutes of the film, which was nice to listen to, but not to watch, as there were just footage from the lives of ordinary city people with a small number of military personnel, for which I lower the score from 10 to 9, more pronounced, cutting eyes and hearing moments are not present. The film is addictive, the viewing time flew unnoticed and left only positive impressions, despite all the horror about which it was told.
Military operations became their second home for soldiers, they used to hear explosions and flying shells over their heads every day from the morning when the war ended, they had a neutral sense of victory, there were no emotions and feelings that contributed to the end of the war, after their total addiction, they seemed to be taken away from their work, fired from it, and on their arrival in their homes they were met as if nothing had happened, which is very sad, the state also did not take any measures to support veterans, they were accepted as if they had done nothing, and sometimes employers were extremely ungrateful and turned them around with the words: 'We had no need'. I personally do not understand how one can treat without respect veterans who defended their homeland in such terrible conditions without realizing possible and imminent death.
Look into the eyes of those who have not returned.
I have long been interested in the subject of the First World War, so after learning that Peter Jackson is making a film based on military newsreels, I decided to definitely watch it. I was not disappointed at all.
The film is not even good in the end result, but in the fact that someone (and not just someone, but Peter Jackson) took up this case, and in this format. Almost two hours of colored and often voiced newsreels are probably the best format in which you can honestly talk about war. I was pleasantly surprised by the decision to replace the voiceover of the announcer on the recording of interviews with veterans - this saves the film from the artificiality of any "non-witness" & #39; narrative. Only the faces of young guys (sometimes still minors, by our standards) and the voices of their comrades in arms, who still managed to grow old and tell their descendants what happened there, in the trenches of Flanders and France. Yet any truly profound tale of war is one of the people who carried it on their shoulders. And when it is slowly led by these people themselves, the words sound even more weighty.
The film is worth watching for everyone, but especially for those who are not familiar with the theme of the First World War. He didn’t make as much of an impression on me as he could, largely because I was familiar with the topic and a lot wasn’t news to me. But in general, the film is very worth watching, and everyone who is not afraid to see trench blood and dirt - fortunately, only on the screen.
7 out of 10
"They'll never get older" Peter Jackson is above all a great historical documentary. It can be safely recommended to those interested in history and, of course, schoolchildren, for whom colorful pathos military militants are filmed in our country (no less cruel, but with a low qualification).
The whole film is a bottomless funnel into the past, a unique and important document. The director and the group worked exclusively with archives: all the footage that you will see is authentic shooting, straight from the front, and the voices behind the scenes belong to real veterans of the First World War, recorded by historians in the last century.
The restored and painted chronicle looks almost modern, which gives the impression of authenticity and routine. You can study in detail the shape of soldiers, look at their open faces. Narratives, on the other hand, represent a direct document of the era: the speech and expressions of those people, their impressions and opinions are as important today as their experiences. This is the mindset of a young man of the 1910s, captured as it is.
The story goes in chronological order - from the first days of the war, the first recruits and their preparation until its end and return to England. Soldiers describe in detail their routine in the rear and at the front. The film doesn’t tell you anything new about the horrors and meaninglessness of war, and still some stories can shock (and others are fun). The main advantage of the picture is that it is a rare chance to hear a simple person, an ordinary person, which is the majority. This is not a romantic story about a valiant officer who, after giving orders, writes letters to his beloved. Therefore, the end of the film is so sad and well describes the state of society at the time.
But the minus of the film in the abundance of speech. Listening to an almost uninterrupted voiceover comment is exhausting. I watched it with subtitles to hear authentic human voices, and I can't say I didn't regret it. Otherwise, it is a serious impressive work done with love and respect.
I just watched Peter Jackson’s documentary They Shall Not Grow Old, which focuses on young British soldiers caught up in a World War I meat grinder. It has been published for a long time.
The high expectations that were caused by the trailer were completely unfulfilled. Technical performance, oddly enough for such a venerable director, was at a low level. Excerpts in which the natural reproduction speed was restored, noise removal and coloring were carried out are good. However, in the film, which lasts 1:39, quite a few. A significant part at the beginning and end of the picture is not colored.
To stretch the time, colored passages are repeated many times. But this is not the worst: the film uses an artificially slowed chronicle, which is replete with creepy artifacts of automatically painted frames. Sometimes they show pieces of the original chronicle, that is, they stretch several times an already poor-quality video to a completely indecent level. It is surprising that the creators did not understand that such manipulations are unacceptable from the point of view of quality and negate the impression of the entire work.
Also, the video chronicle is diluted with static images, and when it comes to colored photos, this is normal. But sometimes authors shove scans of stretched black and white drawings from newspapers with a terrible raster into the film. There were no worthy illustrations of that time, there was no desire to create new ones. It's a terrible mess again. It seems that the restorers did a great job on the chronicle, and then the director came and ruined everything.
In general, what was most interesting about the picture was disappointing. Recovered chronicle very little (not a fifth of the total timekeeping). And so this is the usual anti-war picture: all conscripts went into the army ahead of schedule, and after going through meaningless hell, became forever strangers to society.
6 out of 10
I got to this piece by accident. And it so happened that shortly before viewing this canvas, I read the “History of the First World War” by B. L. Garth, written with live participants of the First World War. Both are written from a British perspective. In the book you will find the historical and military aspects of this war, in the film - the emotions and memories of the inhabitants of the trenches and trenches, "cogs in a huge mechanism."
Thus, the knowledge of the book fell well on the emotions of the documentary. Of course, neither in the book nor in the film can you find a deep analysis of the source of this war. An ordinary 15-16-17-year-old boy from the working-class district of Bristol did not think that he lays his head for the interests of the British monopolies, whose sphere of interest was in a hurry to seize the German capitalists. Hence the stunning senselessness of this war, in the crucible of which millions of lives were burned. And while ordinary Sams, François, Tommy and Vasily bathed in mud and shit, watered with lead and fire, the rear slackers whipped on superprofits from military orders, politicians shared the skins of unkilled bears, and staff generals outlined grandiose plans to destroy their own soldiers in deliberately doomed offensives.
They say that any war is meaningless. However, the parties before the First World War did nothing to prevent a world massacre. German businessmen dreamed of British colonies and markets, English businessmen feared them and dreamed of “taking the arrogance off this Willy”, French militarists rushed to Alsace-Lorraine, courtiers in Russia dreamed of the Straits and Constantinople, Austro-Hungarian ruling circles dreamed of conquering the entire Balkan Peninsula. Later, many of the politicians admitted that they did not seek war, feared it - but when the historic shots took place, everything turned around with fleeting speed.
Weary people, angry soldiers crushed the tsarist power in Russia, Austria-Hungary, Turkey and the German Empire collapsed from monstrous tension. The world was cruel - the losers paid for everything, and even the winners - Italy and Romania were left with nothing. This led to revanchism, then fascism and a new World War. This is what leads to the desire to resolve all issues by force, to cut the Gordian knot. To the millions of guys, girls, women, children who will never get older and never come home.
Simply put, the picture is cool, and the situation is terrible.
"They'll Never Get Older" is not just a masterfully restored chronicle, but perhaps the best war movie ever made. The story is made exactly as it should be – without heroism and special effects. Everything as it is - blood, intestines, hardcore, fear and a complete misunderstanding of why and for what. No blind heroism.
In general, killing each other, living in mud and corpses under the cannonades of heavy artillery, rubbing your ass naked with your hand and pissing in your shoes so that they become softer is not cool. Seeing your friends scatter from shells of turtles and fall out of the insides is also not cool. Doing all this for the sake of the country, which then throws you in the landfill is also an option.
The question is, where is heroism? And the heroism in fact there is no – which is clearly traced through the whole picture.
War is undoubtedly a harsh, senseless and merciless experience that makes a person not so much a man - but rather a physical or mental disability, mocking his relatives and friends after another liter of vodka, shouting what a hero he is and demanding respect for the fact that some uncles from the government decided to play chess with them.
After watching "They'll Never Get Older," it's a relief that nowadays, thank God, people are smarter and don't rush to embrasure for some schizophrenic or ephemeral debt to their homeland. Nothing can justify war, and the man who voluntarily subscribes to it is clearly mentally disturbed by the excess of dancing and his own dissatisfaction. I simply do not see any other explanation for the desire to stab corpses, sitting up to my ears in dirt, intestines and feces.
Jackson's documentary is not that once again emphasizes this - but shows that neither is in a natural way. There is no justification for war and violence, much less heroic.
The whole spectrum of emotions to pour in 1.5 hours? Maybe!
Do you remember the Irishman Peter Jackson? This is the person through whom we can watch the film adaptation of the hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.
Taking the chronicles of the First World War, he added the magic of his editing skills and created an emotional bomb!
They Will Never Get Older is an editing film that tells the story of World War 1 by British troops. More specifically, on behalf of the men who survived it.
They were 15-19 at the time. They saw war as romantic and did not understand death. Then they committed the first murder and never found the answer to the question “why was this war necessary?”
1.5 hours is like 30 minutes. I went through the whole spectrum of emotions. From joy and laughter to the deepest sorrow and tears. It falls on the shoulders of everyday life and will not let you relax for a while.
Documentary footage, without censorship and with all the cruelty of reality, are formed into a single plot. Behind the scenes is a narrative from several men whose lives may have already been interrupted by the current moment. For you, they will be personified by all the faces in the film, because they tell one story.
Strong, emotional movie! He made my faith in the master of his craft!
10 out of 10
More than a century ago, the First World War began, a short time in world history, but from the perspective of today, it was a long time ago. The vast majority of people do not even remember the essence of the conflict, nor the theater of military operations, and it is difficult to name the participating countries. That’s what it means to be a long time ago.
The famous New Zealand director Peter Jackson literally opened this huge veil of time for the current generation. After all, when you see not something like an archive video, but just old photos, it seems that they are completely different people, different faces, and a very, very long time separates us from that era. And careful restoration, colorization, filling the image with sound, and even the effect of 3D, allow you to take a completely different look not so much at those events, but at those people and realize that they are the same as we are now, in essence, although they divide us for a whole century.
Documentary "They'll Never Get Older" (or "They'll Never Get Older") is a literal history textbook, where a whole narrative story is cut through the participants' memories, their thoughts and feelings, experiences and fears. The picture is replete with a demonstration of a genuine war, without embellishment, without any censorship, throwing a real nightmare, horror, and stench on the viewer. The tape shows only the archives of the British army, but you can easily project the entire message of the picture on the situation of the Russian side. This war was meaningless and incomprehensible for ordinary soldiers, only those in power pursued their goals in this conflict.
8 out of 10
Who would have thought that a person who began his career as a director in distant New Zealand with a demonstration of eating alien vomit (" In Bad Taste) and with a Macabrian bloody bacchanalia (" Living Dead Man) - Oh, Peter, I adore you for this! - will easily cope not only with the epic sweep of Tolkien's trilogy "Lord of the Rings", but also give us an unusual and spectacularly piercing documentary about the war of a hundred years ago.
Peter Jackson and his team did a titanic job of restoring and painting black and white World War I footage from the Air Force archives and the Imperial War Museum in London. Jackson even managed, thanks to the work of lip-reading specialists, to voice what the soldiers say, and provide the narrative with archival interviews with veterans of that terrible war.
And this is just an incredibly exciting and emotional spectacle! The breath simply spirals into the goiter when, after a small introduction, the square of a black and white mute image with the corresponding creak of an old movie camera melts into a large-format restored action with a riot of colors, a normalized reproduction rate and a sonic waterfall of frontline life.
We are all raised on cinematic milk - a spectacular, brilliantly played and staged, safe surrogate that allows us to come into contact with the harsh military reality, albeit giving a staged sweetness. It is so absorbed into our spectator nature that at first it is difficult to realize and believe that the image of a hundred years ago, licked to perfection and puffing with color, accompanied by a homon of soldiers’ everyday life and rare replicas thrown into the camera, is a real chronicle of the first full-scale human slaughter, and not a traditional cinematic epic, carefully played out by skillful extras.
The host of voice-overs of veterans singing a soldier’s song about the putrid essence and absurd senselessness of this war (like any other) is surprisingly superimposed on the animated images of participants in those events, whose views and smiles only echo these testimonies, supported by the power of the grandiose work of the restoration team.
It is a pity that it was not possible to experience this cinematic experience on the big screen and in 3D.
In general, an excellent documentary, as another (which already!) example of the fact that humanity with some donkey stubbornness and masochistic madness continues to frantically search for the same unfortunate rake on its way.
Verdict: Kulik is delighted with this swamp!
The movie I’ve been waiting for since I first watched the trailer last year. Documentary material, the military chronicle of the First World War is presented in one artistic narrative, one big memory of the participants of those events a hundred years ago. Someone was disappointed, someone could not stand the scenes without censorship (age qualification of the film 18+) and left the session. But most of the audience was left sitting, staring at the screen.
Peter Jackson has done a great job. When you look at these faces, they look like they are alive. Someone smiles, lighting a cigarette, someone looks at the camera with interest, sitting in a dirty trench.
I can’t tell if the movie disappointed me or met my expectations. I can only say that the director managed to convey the idea of the senselessness of war, whoever started it. It was a pity at the end of the guys coming home, on whose behalf the narrative is coming. It was as if they realized that what they were doing at the front, what they were dying for, was unnecessary.
There are documentaries that are not inferior to artistic ones in terms of impact. “They’ll never get older” is one of them.
It would seem that the theme of the First World War in culture has long been exhausted. However, in the hands of a talented author, the material can live a new life, perhaps without telling the world anything new.
But as I said! Jackson's film isn't just a documentary. On the one hand, it consists only of film-photo and audio chronicles. Apart from colored monochrome frames, and added sound effects, everything here is from and to authentic. Every voice of a World War I veteran, every shell rupture, and every corpse in no man’s land. On the other hand, the film is not a “textbook” with a dry retelling of a long time passed. It has a plot. One big collective, authentic war memory, but structured, with its own narrative logic.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the technology of “modernization” of the chronicle. Two-thirds of the film material was not just colored, it increased the frame rate, making the movement in the frame smoother, and the image more realistic. After all, subsonic film was filmed with almost half the frequency than by today’s standards, and many times less than Jackson’s cameras that filmed The Hobbits.
We ended up with a great documentary in the spirit of Remarque’s war novels.
They'll Never Get Older, a documentary recreated by Peter Jackson of the 1914-1918 war, when England was at war with Germany. I won't be sly, I dropped a tear at the end. This is a very moving film, which shows footage of real people who fought. They laughed and smiled, fought and fought. They died young. Yes, anyone who has read No Change on the Western Front will understand that this documentary is Jackson’s personal paraphrase of those terrible events. The voiceovers, which are like the voices of soldiers, tell in every detail what horror was happening there: lice, rats, hunger, cold, random bullets and half a million innocent victims. Those who returned home after the end of the war felt unbearable pain from the fact that for people who were not at military points, the war passed unnoticed and meaningless. The military guys, many of whom had not even finished school, did not even have a job.
I have written about it on my wall once before, but I will never stop saying that war is not only terrible, it is meaningless. It turns people, personalities, into pieces of cannon fodder that will never get older. Thank you to Peter Jackson for such a great experience. And I believe that documentaries such as No Change on the Western Front should be mass-propagated, implanted in people’s brains, and taught not to be a herd and not to think that war is romantic. Anything but war. To get to know people, you need to know yourself first. And I know very well that we tend to forget, to forget a lot. We must not forget that we are all brothers and sisters. We should not be limited to one territory, one nation, one race. And if our beloved state will propagate, impose, demand from us that we go to war and kill “enemies”, then just say “no”. Honestly, call me a coward, a fool, whatever you want, but I would rather die in civilian territory, where they will kill me, than torment myself on the front line, where I will suffer, seeing other people's deaths. I am very glad that I was born in peacetime and I fully understand that war cannot be eradicated, anger cannot be eradicated. All that remains is to improve yourself, to be above propaganda and to learn to think critically. Remember, they never got older. We don't know their names, but we know their history. So please don't repeat it.
The quote from the review read: “The director of The Lord of the Rings has done a titanic work on the chronicle.” Black and white shots have become color, the speed of reproduction has been corrected, and thanks to the work of lip-reading specialists, it became possible to hear what soldiers say.
In fact, the film is arranged as follows: behind the scenes, the participants of military operations speak non-stop, and often clipped, according to one sentence (I am sure that they spoke more, but only fragments were taken into the film); on the screen they also show photos, then newsreels without voiceover ( not always colored). That is, do not expect to see an hour and a half of colored and voiced newsreels, everything is not so. The first 25 minutes of the newsreel is not even painted, and voices behind the scenes talk and talk without stopping.
I know very well what war is, about British tanks of the First World War, about gas attacks, about how I “felt a blow and saw a leg pierced through,” etc. I’ve read and heard it, as have many people. The film consists of such stories covering all the years of the war from beginning to end. The “revived” actors (i.e. in color and sound) occupy a very small part of the film. So if you want to hear stories about the war, you’ll probably like the movie. If, like me, you expect to see a newsreel come alive, don’t waste your time.
The First World War in the history of cinema did not find such a reflection as the Second. If about the confrontation of 1939-1945 any moviegoer will immediately name a dozen films, then about the global conflict preceding it, not many pictures are remembered. We can assume that this is also due to technical progress.
The surviving chronicle of those years tunes almost to a fabulous perception of what is happening on the screen, as a result of which all events seem fake, and passions are puppet. Smiles, tears, laughter, bewilderment, enthusiasm of people who look into the camera lens with some embarrassment, the modern viewer will consider, rather, for a theatrical production than for life realities.
Playing with the audience’s perception, Peter Jackson in his documentary “They Will Never Get Older”, dedicated to the soldiers who died in the First World War, embodies on the screen Empire stereotypes about the life of Englishmen of the Edwardian era, descended from antique postcards. Ladies in dresses with an inflated waist, with an umbrella in one hand and with a leopard in the other. Men, always stressed helpful, in three-suits and cylinders on their heads. Optimism and expectation of change.
The general idyll is somewhat disturbed by the report of war. But this anxiety is no more irritation from the buzzing of a mosquito in the summer evening. Inspired by propaganda slogans, young men aged 16-19 with great pleasure enlist in the ranks of the British army, hoping to instantly destroy the enemy. But as soon as the action moves to the forefront, the fairy tale for soldiers, fascinated by belonging to something great, ends.
Bullets and rats are now their companions. Fear and despair live forever in the heads of snipers who have not been crumbled. Dirt, blood, dysentery, hunger. The endless nauseating stench of decay. Bodies of friends whose last refuge was barbed wire. Their reality is the expectation of phosgene breathing of death and bodies affected by gangrene.
The paradox is that with the onset of the ruthlessly honest part of the picture, Peter Jackson makes the viewer believe in magic. During direct hostilities, the “fairytale” chronicle goes beyond the modest square of the frames, the frame rate stabilizes, color appears, and we are given the opportunity to look into the eyes of ordinary, not yet seen life guys who are waiting for imminent death, wondering why they are all this.
The viewer presses into the chair, while in the head at the same time there is a contempt for the anger of the human race, leading to the furious destruction of their own kind, and admiration for its creative power, capable of calling the soul to communicate with higher matters and repentance.
The merciless shocking footage of battles, filled with corpses, tormented by the living, who are envious of corpses, torn limbs and concentrated pain of the guys who just had to fall in love for the first time, earn their first money, see the birth of children, make once again horrified by the senselessness of war as a phenomenon for an individual person. Fear the manipulation of those in power who sow discord and hatred. It is appalling that humanity did not draw the proper conclusions from the trench war, the most inhumane war, where cruelty and inhumanity were the driving force.
These guys are forever in a foreign land. They will never know that the case for which they died, only a couple of decades postponed the beginning of an even greater disaster. Soon it would be their wives' turn, not their mothers', to flinch at every knock on the door, waiting for the postman with the funerals for his sons and husbands. But they have no such fate. Gnawed by rats, maimed by shrapnel, trampled into the mud, they will never get older.
8 out of 10