After watching They Shall Not Grow Old with the class I was uneasy that night. The movie was honestly very powerful to watch and I would argue was one of the better war movies I have ever seen. The most interesting part of the film for me came after the credits when we got to hear the director discuss his plan and the process of making this film. It was really impressive to hear and witness the hours they put in to listening to all the authentic audio from veterans and sifting through the hours of archival footage from the war. I thought it was also particularly interesting to hear about why he chose to specifically follow a British soldier on the Western front and leave out many of the other countries and people involved in the first World War. Also watching them recreate many of the artillery noises and shelling was really amazing because the whole time during the movie before the director’s portion I was completely engulfed and immersed in the battlefield. It truly felt like you were there, and considering it was all repurposed old archival footage from the war itself is just astonishing.

 

There are so many things I liked about this movie but two things in particular that stood out to me were the beginning of the film and the one section with the cuts from living soldiers talking to dead bodies of soldiers on the ground. The beginning of the film was impactful because it wasn’t shockingly repurposed until a while into the film. The beginning started on a smaller screen or winder too and actually expanded until finally filling up the whole frame. I remember specifically when it transitioned into the portion of the film that was colorized and I think everyone had a similar reaction in the audience, which was simply just shock and awe. One man in the theater actually let out an emphatic “wow!” This was incredibly slick by the director and really made me immersed in the film because as soon as it became colorized I was just there on the battlefield absorbed into the war.

 

The second thing that stood out to me was that section that the director discusses after the credits where they show a soldiers face as he is talking and then it cuts to them lying dead on the ground after artillery sound effects. This is repeated for several soldiers and I thought this was one of if not the most influential part of the film. It is really difficult to display the devastating nature of war, and WWI in particular was an extremely gruesome war. I thought by including this specific portion of the film it was really effective at not only relating us to the soldiers in the film but also just by framing how horrible war is. When the director told us these soldiers’ faces had been shown earlier in shots within the film it really sunk in why this part of the film was so impactful and it was because the audience genuinely felt like we knew these men. By fully immersing us in the war and showing us shots of these men from earlier, looking at them then lying dead on the ground was extremely emotional and powerful.