They Shall Not Grow Old

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Movie
German title They Shall Not Grow Old
Original title They Shall Not Grow Old
Country of production United Kingdom , New Zealand
original language English
Publishing year 2018
length 99 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Jackson
production Peter Jackson,
Clare Olsen
cut Jabez Olsen

They Shall Not Grow Old is a documentary film directed by Peter Jackson about the First World War that premiered on October 16, 2018 at the London Film Festival . Jackson used historical film material for this, which he colored and added voices to . The television premiere was on November 11, 2018 on BBC Two . The film opened in cinemas in the United States on December 17, 2018. The theatrical release in Germany followed on June 27, 2019.

Content and structure

The film is Peter Jackson's dedicated own grandfather, who from 1910 to 1919 in the 2nd South Wales Borderers Infantry Regiment served, and accesses footage from archives of the Imperial War Museum and audio recordings of the BBC back

The film shows British soldiers during the First World War and covers everything from the outbreak of hostilities to the events of the war on the battlefields in Belgium and the armistice of 1918 .

The first 20 minutes of the film show preparations for war in black and white pictures, framed by a small central rectangle that gradually expands. Ultimately, this fills the entire screen and turns into completely colored images. From this point on, the color palette uses earthy and military greens, a transition that reminds Variety's Guy Lodge of a moment in the film The Wizard of Oz . In the following, the film shows frontline soldiers during the bitter trench warfare from 1914 to 1918 , but also in everyday situations in which the men pass the time laughing and singing to distract themselves from the turmoil of the war. According to Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter , if the action shifts from England to Flanders, the mood of the film darkens when the brothers in arms find themselves in filthy trenches teeming with rats and where mustard gas is the soldiers' least concern . German bullets, grenades and mines developed into a constant background music / background noise in these moments, while the narrative takes the form of a real horror film, according to Dalton.

The film is dedicated to Peter Jackson's own grandfather, who served in the 2nd South Wales Borderers Infantry Regiment from 1910 to 1919.

production

“The men in the pictures are just like us. Once you get rid of that weird Charlie Chaplin black and white look, you see: people are just like they are today. That shouldn't come as a surprise, 100 years isn't a very long time. But it is noticeable how human they are. "

- Peter Jackson

On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War , Peter Jackson restored and colored images of the Western Front and added voices to the footage. The recordings were also sharpened and converted to 3D. In addition to diaries and letters for the voiceover , Jackson had also taken advantage of the work of lip readers who were able to find out what the men were actually saying in the sections of the film shown and thus assigned the existing contributions to the conversation to the individual speakers. The dialogues were then spoken by actors. The sound of the film has also been improved. The sound recordings come from the BBC , the footage from the archives of the Imperial War Museum , on whose behalf Jackson produced the film. “I could do what I wanted,” said the director in an interview, “the only condition was to use only material from the museum archive”.

The title They Shall Not Grow Old was taken from the patriotic poem For the Fallen (English "For the fallen") by Laurence Binyon . At the same time he is referring to the soldiers who died in the war, who were just 15 or 16 years old and who are mentioned in the credits of the film. Jackson dedicated the film to his own grandfather, who served in the 2nd South Wales Borderers Infantry Regiment from 1910 to 1919. At the premiere in London, the director said: “My grandpa died in 1940, so I never met him, but my father was able to answer a lot of questions about him. Something like that still works, but in ten or twenty years it will probably no longer be possible. I just want to say one thing, which I find important in my personal experience: If you have parents and grandparents whose parents were in World War I - ask them out. "

In addition to Peter Jackson, the film was produced by Clare Olsen on behalf of 14-18 NOW, an art academy founded to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War. The film was edited by Jabez Olsen , while Wayne Stables from Weta Digital acted as VFX supervisor . Together, Jackson and his team used more than 600 hours of footage. The background music for the film comes from Plan 9 . Jackson's sound engineers also made new recordings of the rumble of old tanks or the thunder of historical guns.

After the screening of a first trailer, the film premiered on October 16, 2018 at the London Film Festival in the presence of Prince William . From October 25 to 29, 2018, visitors to London also had the opportunity to watch the film for free in the Imperial War Museum. On November 11, 2018, 100 years after the end of the First World War, the film was shown on BBC Two and from November 9 to 11 in selected cinemas in 3D and 2D. In the United Kingdom, clearance was 15 years or older, making some of the British soldiers drafted at the end of World War I younger. In addition, copies of the film should be made available to schools in the UK for educational purposes. The cinema release in Germany was on June 27, 2019, in Austria on the following day. In January and February 2020, the film was presented as part of the SchulKinoWochen in North Rhine-Westphalia.

In the fall of 2018, Jackson announced that he would also like to re-release some of his earlier films such as Meet the Feebles and Braindead in improved quality.

reception

Reviews

The film has so far received the approval of all critics at Rotten Tomatoes and achieved an average rating of 8.7 out of a possible 10 points. The consensus there is that They Shall Not Grow Old is a brilliant cinematic homage to the victims of a generation.

Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian describes Peter Jackson's film as an electrifying journey into the trenches of the First World War. Before the eyes of the beholder, the soldiers returned to an eerie, hyper-real life, like ghosts or figures evoked in a seance. The faces are unforgettable, and the coloring and everything else is a kind of alienation shock tactic and a means to remind that real people are shown here.

Variety's Guy Lodge says Jackson used the same digital wizardry on Imperial War Museum material that he used to make Tolkien's Middle-earth a reality, making a reality that is about to disappear: " The collective experience of the British soldiers at the front, from the gung-ho spirit of recruitment to the exhaustion of PTSD . ”Jackson's interest is not in discovering new information, but in discovering new dimensions of what we already know Add familiarity, says Guy Lodge. For him, it is not about historical data and milestones and political processes, but about the everyday, on-site change in mood and morale among the soldiers over four very long years, which is rather neglected in school books, says Lodge. Instead of mentioning the terms “ Triple Entente ” or “ Treaty of Versailles ”, the film shows memories of the heavy boots soaked with urine and the dangers of rats and lice in the battles. Lodge, too, particularly catches the eye in his criticism of the film's reconstructed faces, which had become almost indistinguishably blurred in the archives and are now marked by character and wrinkled with worry, reflecting terror, but also an occasional cheerfulness.

Stephen Dalton of The Hollywood Reporter notes that Jackson never spared the viewer a bloody detail, like the bodies of young men puffed up in the mud and colonized by flies. While some critics may argue that Jackson smooths out and ignores real events by focusing on details and not providing broader sociopolitical commentary on the war, the director made a haunting firsthand film about the experiences of British soldiers and a thoroughly engaging lesson for bringing the past to life, says Dalton.

Marion Löhndorf from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung writes in her review that the result is phenomenal, speaks of a Lazarus effect and explains: “In Peter Jackson's film, the scenes of war preparation and civil life remain gray. Death appears in color. ”Despite all the experimental chutzpah, They Shall Not Grow Old fits seamlessly into a British culture of remembrance that has always attached great importance to the Great War, Löhndorf continues. Jackson focuses on the experience of the common soldiers on the Western Front, many of them in their teens, but shows not only the horror, but also situations in which people laughed, even when there was nothing to laugh about.

The German Film and Media Assessment gave the film the rating of particularly valuable . The jury's reasoning stated: “The film material, which is over 100 years old, has never been received in this form, and in combination with the stories of contemporary witnesses, They Shall Not Grow Old is an absolutely exciting and remarkable work in terms of contemporary history, which - that must not be forgotten - the documentary material from these many sources is clearly fictionalized and emotionalized through the editing, coloring and stereoscopic processing. "

In July, August and September 2019 They Shall Not Grow Old was presented by kinofenster.de as “Film of the Month”. In addition, the online portal offers material on the film for lessons from the 11th grade and recommends it for the subjects of history, English and politics.

Commercial win

In Great Britain, the film was shown in selected cinemas on the occasion of the London Film Festival and achieved considerable success: When they were released in 247 cinemas, They Shall Not Grow Old grossed the equivalent of 730,000 US dollars in just one day. The film also developed into an undreamt-of financial success in the USA and grossed more than 10 million US dollars there on its opening weekend. In total, worldwide revenue from cinema screenings is $ 20.8 million.

Awards (selection)

British Academy Film Awards 2019

Critics' Choice Documentary Awards 2019

  • Nomination for best documentary
  • Nomination in the Most Innovative Documentary category
  • Nomination in the category Best Archival Documentary
  • Nomination for Best Director (Peter Jackson)
  • Nomination for Best Film Editing ( Jabez Olssen )
  • Nomination for the best film music ( Plan 9 )

Golden Reel Awards 2019

  • Award in the category Outstanding Achievement in Sound Editing - Feature Documentary

London Critics' Circle Film Awards 2019

  • Nomination as Documentary Of The Year

Web links

Commons : They Shall Not Grow Old  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for They Shall Not Grow Old . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 187434 / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Stephen Dalton: 'They Shall Not Grow Old': Film Review. In: The Hollywood Reporter, October 16, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c Guy Lodge: London Film Review: Peter Jackson's 'They Shall Not Grow Old'. In: Variety, October 16, 2018.
  4. ↑ https://video.tagesspiegel.de/weltkriegs-alltag-in-3-d-they-shall-not-grow-old.html
  5. ↑ a b c Archive footage of the front in 3D: Peter Jackson's new film leads into the trenches of the First World War. In: Stern Online. Retrieved October 18, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b c d Peter Bradshaw: They Shall Not Grow Old review - Peter Jackson's electrifying journey into the first world war trenches. In: The Guardian, October 16, 2018.
  7. ↑ a b Gabriella Geisinger: They Shall Not Grow Old release date: Cast, plot, trailer and more on World War I movie. In: express.co.uk, October 17, 2018.
  8. ↑ a b Martin Wolf: First World War in 3D and color: Terribly real. In: Spiegel Online, June 27, 2019.
  9. ^ A b Fionnuala Halligan: 'They Shall Not Grow Old': London Review. In: screendaily.com, October 16, 2018.
  10. ↑ a b In color and 3D: Peter Jackson shows recordings from World War I that you have never seen before. In: Focus Online, October 10, 2018.
  11. ↑ https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-6282983/Prince-William-attends-Shall-Not-Grow-Old-premiere-Pippa-Middleton-gives-birth.html
  12. ^ A b Joana Müller: “Breathtaking”: New Peter Jackson film after a huge success in Germany? In: moviepilot.de, October 18, 2018.
  13. ↑ Film starts in June 2019. In: skip.at. Retrieved May 27, 2019.
  14. ↑ https://nrw.db-schulkinowochen.de/webanmeldung/web_film.inc.php?selectedNr=989&PNr=5776
  15. ↑ Long confiscated: The best splatter film of all time will probably finally come out uncut. In: Focus Online, October 23, 2018.
  16. ^ They Shall Not Grow Old. In: Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved April 12, 2019. Note: The Tomatometer is the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes Approved Critics who gave the film a positive rating.
  17. ↑ Marion Löhndorf: Now the soldiers are talking: Peter Jackson gives new life to film documents from the First World War. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung, November 10, 2018.
  18. ^ They Shall Not Grow Old. Jury reasoning: Predicate particularly valuable. In: German film and media evaluation. Retrieved April 25, 2019.
  19. ^ Philipp Bühler: They Shall Not Grow Old. In: kinofenster.de, June 27, 2019.
  20. ↑ http://www.filmstarts.de/nachrichten/18523336.html
  21. ↑ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=theyshallnotgrowold.htm
  22. ↑ https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt7905466/?ref_=bo_se_r_2
  23. ↑ Katherine Schaffstall: Critics' Choice Doc Awards: 'Biggest Little Farm,' AOC Film 'Knock Down the House,' Obama-Backed 'American Factory' Among Nominees. In: The Hollywood Reporter, October 14, 2019.
  24. ↑ https://deadline.com/2019/02/bohemian-rhapsody-roma-top-golden-reel-awards-winners-list-1202559380/
  25. ↑ Rich Cline: The Favorite leads nominees for CC Film Awards. In: criticscircle.org.uk, December 18, 2018.