Tanya’s Score: Great*
Rated: PG-13
Starring: once living, now gone WWI vets
Plot: WWI footage brought to life with clarity, colour and sound
Tanya’s Verdict: This movie was amazing, plain and simple. The level of painstaking detail as well as respect that went into its creation may not always be identifiable, but it adds to the overall effect that this film has on its audience. Director Peter Jackson states that this movie is made by a non-historian for the non-historian. Perhaps – as the footage is never identified in terms of specific area or date. The voice over narrations are from WWI veterans, archived from long-ago interviews – and they focus on personal feelings, emotions and experiences.
At times, while watching this movie I forgot it was actual real, live footage – 100 years old! Vivid (not to mention 3D), the images are compelling and tragic and beautiful and gruesome. One particular scene left its mark on me: men (many of them smooth-faced teenagers) sit in a trench awaiting the order to move into battle. After the movie ended and credits rolled, Jackson offered a brief behind-the-scenes segment about the making of this film. During this, he re-played the film footage of the men sitting in the trench. The camera pans across the men’s faces and Jackson’s narration points out how absolutely terrified they look. He goes on to say that as an audience, we are bearing witness to the final 15 minutes of all of these young lives – as they were soon ordered out of the trench and into battle – with no survivors.
Every visual as well as voice over throughout the film reminds us of the unique thoughts and feelings of every soldier. Yet Jackson strings it together with one common thread – the heartbreaking humanity found on the frontlines of WWI.
*Four score descriptions: Sh**; Okay; Good; Great