June 30 (Lunar calendar: May 13), 2023 Friday | Dawnxisoul393art
Today, we watched Peter Jackson's war documentary "They Don't Grow Old," which premiered at the London Film Festival on Oct. 16, 2018. The film shows the daily life of soldiers during World War I from 1914 to 1918. From 1914 to 1918, the first World War not only changed the historical process, but also changed the fate of countless young people. They were innocent young people. They put on military uniforms with a cavity of blood and vowed to defend the country to the death, but were devastated on the battlefield full of corpses. Amid the deafening gunfire, they methodically tested new weapons, but the next time they hit flesh and blood. Ordinary soldiers who faced death threats every day still smiled when they faced the camera.
New Zealand director Peter Jackson, who directed the epic masterpieces the Lord of the rings, accepted an arduous task: the Imperial War Museum hoped that he could make a film about World War I. It was required to use the museum's war historical materials, about 23000 hours of video materials and 33000 veteran recordings. After four years, Peter Jackson successfully completed this task. He told this history not from the perspective of the world pattern, but from the perspective of British soldiers on the western front. Therefore, this film was more inclined to humanistic experience than political history. The whole film lasted for one and a half hours. All the pictures were historical materials. There was no awkward interpretation of modern actors and no boring interview with historians. Everything was original a hundred years ago. In the 99 minute documentary, the background narrators were veterans of World War I - World War I witnesses personally told the vivid stories that were only in memory.
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In order to make the visual effect more vivid, the recorder collected the click of the bolt, the sound of horse hoofs, shell explosion, footsteps in the mud and so on to dub the picture again. The main creative team collected more than 600 hours of audio interviews with 250 to 300 veterans, which took a year to sort out. At that time, the video data were not recorded. Peter Jackson invited world-class lip masters to interpret the mouth shapes of soldiers in the video and insist on restoring all details. 3D reproduction, color restoration, re dubbing, a four-year in-depth processing, revitalized the sleeping historical materials and made people feel the real shock of World War I. Peter Jackson said that this film was his most private film. His grandfather's death due to the trauma of war has become his shooting opportunity. This was an unforgettable and moving course, an extraordinary human experience, and a demonstration of how to make the past vivid, record the image into the amber of time and space, and infinitely approach the historical scene.
The construction method of the film was quite conventional. A large number of interview audio were compiled in chronological order, supplemented by corresponding historical images or posters, to restore the experiences and ideas of British soldiers during World War I with first-hand audio-visual materials. After the first 25 minutes of extremely conventional narration and form, the soldiers of that year set out to fight, and the miracle of the image also occurred: The frame number of 16 frames in the early stage was adjusted to the standard, the picture was enlarged to fill the whole screen, the black-and-white image was filled with color, and the noise and scratches of the picture were removed. Coupled with the environmental sound effects restored by the weapons of World War I and the dialogue identified according to the mouth shape, the great film technology had brought history alive as never before. As the material of early news documentaries, we are afraid that photographers in those years could not think deeply about the ontology of documentaries. In those years, most of the original materials were shot in fixed positions, and after the lens was zoomed in, the scene frame could be moved selectively, and the director obtained the power of scene scheduling.
This film presents a moment fished out of the dusty time. Sometimes it is relaxed and sometimes painful, but they are undoubtedly true. This recollection points to the daily life of the war. It is everyone's private and real feelings, which is different from the grand and vague official expression. In fact, in order to avoid different perspectives or positions, Peter Jackson chose all the oral statements of ordinary soldiers, and did not outline a specific war for the film. Facing the war, young boys showed instinctive excitement at the beginning. They ignored the age limit for joining the army, which was a dedication driven by patriotic enthusiasm. Real history cannot cater to the stereotyped imagination of modern people, when they arrived at the military camp, the embarrassment of conditions and the tension of training made them really aware of the change of identity.
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At the end of the war, the response of the British army was not as elated as that of the rear. "There was no parade in any form, no one spoke, and everyone was paralyzed.". "Nearly one million British and European servicemen died from 1914 to 1918." When this line of subtitles was printed on the screen, the picture returned to its original appearance, and the magic disappeared. The soldiers who returned home were not treated well. People never talked about war and most people were not interested at all. They were one of a large number of young people who couldn't find jobs. The reality was cruel. These soldiers who could still speak were not winners at all, but survivors. This group of young people once saw through the absurdity of war, but they affirmed the value of the army. For ordinary people, the outbreak of World War I was sudden. There was still a football match with Germany, but there was a sudden news that Britain had declared war on Germany.
Some veterans recalled that what they feared most at that time was that the war was over before they went to the battlefield. The British accent and the American accent compared, there is a kind of dull cute, in the film more obvious to the teenagers do not know the world. They put on their best suits and went to the draft with honor, only to have their full outfits confiscated and replaced with unflattering earth-colored uniforms and heavy military boots. After a short and exciting military training, they marched into the Belgian battlefield. A week went faster and longer than a week. As they walked forward, they heard the sound of gunfire getting closer and closer. On the way, they met the soldiers from the front line. The young soldiers excitedly asked how the front line was. The soldiers from the front line were numb and said, "Terrible, man." Soon, they faced the cruelty of the war. When the war was not severe, the soldiers would get together and have fun. They played the guitar with a bottle, played the harmonica, played the Scottish bagpipe, fed each other, and caught frogs.
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Half of the kids can find endless fun together in a difficult environment. Most people in the film grin most of the time. At that time, films were just popular. In the face of cameramen, everyone passing by stared at them naively and shyly. It was difficult to continue to do their own things. Some people don't know the difference between photography and photography. They stand there and smile awkwardly waiting for the photo to be completed (at that time, it took more than ten seconds to pose for imaging). These looked at the camera of a face, a pair of eyes, after a hundred years, watching us, we suddenly had a sense of supernatural communication with the ancients. Peter Jackson said in the end that his biggest wish was that this film could let people ask their grandparents about their memories of that time, because their grandparents' parents may have told their grandparents about this history.
Let's read Douglas MacArthur's quote: "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away." These words keep old soldiers in people's hearts forever.
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