They Shall Not Grow Old (2018, Peter Jackson) (Patreon)

68/100

Didn't get a chance to see the 3-D version in theatrical release, which is probably just as well since I generally dislike 3-D, and especially dislike when it's employed in an effort to make projected images seem more real and/or immersive. (Has precisely the opposite effect on me.) And while colorization has matured significantly since the '80s, it's still somehow identifiable as an approximated alien overlay, hence slightly off-putting. No, the sound design is what got me. Despite knowing perfectly well that all of the explosions and footfalls and muttered words were of 21st-century origin, I succumbed to the illusion rather than resisting it; after a few minutes of being impressed, the stunt-like aspect disappeared, and the film played like any other documentary that uses archival footage to create a present-tense narrative (which happens to be my favorite kind of historical doc*). Jackson's shrewd decision to maintain a nonstop fusillade of voiceover narration ensures that no particular noise stands out as false—it's just a persistent background drone that...I was about to say "lends verisimilitude," but that's not quite right. What it does is partially eliminate silence's alienation effect, the disjunction between what our brain insists that we should hear and what our ears actually do (or don't, rather). I've always appreciated—and I know there are some who don't, who instead find it intrusive—when a pianist accompanying a silent film provides the sound of an onscreen knock at the door (in closeup, usually) by rapping the top of the piano, especially when the pianist has seen the film in question so many times that (s)he can get the timing exactly right. It just avoids a mental hiccough, making it easier for me to stay fully engaged (though, again, I recognize that others have the opposite reaction, and may do so in this instance as well). There are even a couple of brief moments in They Shall Not Grow Old when we hear dialogue that precisely matches what people onscreen clearly are in fact saying (presumably determined by expert lip-readers)—the first example of this occurred so naturally that I only thought to marvel at it a few seconds after the fact, and had to rewind. 

The downside of this enveloping approach is that the lack of close-quarters combat footage feels even more acute than it would have otherwise. Jackson does what he can, using what I assume are illustrations from the period, and that was certainly a better choice than just skipping past the part where almost everyone who's not retroactively narrating the action dies. But the spell inevitably gets broken, even though the sound effects continue. Nobody's fault, of course. Just the inherent nature of wartime journalism before the advent of small handheld cameras. 

In any case, it's good to be reminded, graphically (those shots of the "toilets"!), that I've never undergone a day of genuine hardship or privation in my life. And I say that as someone who's spent time both homeless and in jail! (Over 30 years ago, no cause for alarm.)

* Odds are, in fact, that I'd have liked this film even without the technological bells and whistles. Its structural conceit—fashioning the experience of a generic WWI soldier from the collected memories of 100+ veterans—is plenty strong all by its lonesome.