Post by peelee on Oct 30, 2018 17:26:15 GMT
As the centenary of the Armistice approaches, release of Peter Jackson's documentary based on British film in the Imperial War Museum and BBC archives is timely. The commentary derives from interviews in oral history archives, that are skilfully integrated with film of British volunteers from the balmy August days of 1914 through to war-exhausted November 1918.
It is roughly chronological though without any dates or named battles mentioned, and is both appalling and fascinating, while witnesses with a range of regional accents explain facts significant and trivial that were features of the war they experienced. There have been individual films and documentary series about this war before, but what makes this new documentary stand out is the re-processing of film the better to help the modern viewer connect with something that by now lacks living witnesses. Fuzzy old monochrome film clips are transformed into colour detail that underlines the humanity these soldiers share with people like us now.
There have been stage classics based on the 1914-18 war front, in the decades that followed the war, never mind other works that may have had immediate impact in their postwar time but been forgotten as time has passed. This latest film underlines the intensity of what happened to war participants, and I think why it eventually reverberated culturally and politically once realisation of what had happened sank in.
It is roughly chronological though without any dates or named battles mentioned, and is both appalling and fascinating, while witnesses with a range of regional accents explain facts significant and trivial that were features of the war they experienced. There have been individual films and documentary series about this war before, but what makes this new documentary stand out is the re-processing of film the better to help the modern viewer connect with something that by now lacks living witnesses. Fuzzy old monochrome film clips are transformed into colour detail that underlines the humanity these soldiers share with people like us now.
There have been stage classics based on the 1914-18 war front, in the decades that followed the war, never mind other works that may have had immediate impact in their postwar time but been forgotten as time has passed. This latest film underlines the intensity of what happened to war participants, and I think why it eventually reverberated culturally and politically once realisation of what had happened sank in.
