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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

When seeing must be believing

February 1, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In my latest Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column, I talk about They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s new World War II documentary, and the way in which it uses digital techniques to alter and manipulate historic film footage.

Here’s an excerpt:

Few things are rarer than a big-screen documentary that receives wildly enthusiastic mass-media attention—especially one whose subject is something that happened a century ago. But “They Shall Not Grow Old,” Peter Jackson’s World War I documentary, which was screened in select U.S. theaters by Fathom Events earlier this month, got so much favorable press that starting on Friday, it will be shown at 500 theaters in 150 North American markets. If it got any bad reviews, I didn’t see them, and when I saw the film a couple of weeks ago, I was stunned by the compulsive power of its extraordinarily vivid portrait of life in the front-line trenches.

Even so, certain critics have expressed lingering reservations about the extent to which Mr. Jackson has digitally altered the archival film footage supplied by London’s Imperial War Museum on which “They Shall Not Grow Old” is based. Adam Gopnik, for instance, wrote in a largely admiring New Yorker review of the film that such alteration inevitably raises “unsettling questions” about its underlying authenticity. He has a point, too: Not only has most of the footage been colorized, but Mr. Jackson has changed it in other ways, adding a soundtrack, correcting the speed at which it is shown, reconfiguring parts of certain scenes to make them resemble the camerawork you’d see in a modern movie and, most surprisingly, incorporating a 3D effect (though many screenings are “flat”). 

None of this bothered me while I was watching “They Shall Not Grow Old.” But as I reflected on what I’d seen, I found myself asking: Has Mr. Jackson gone too far? Can any movie that manipulates archival footage so extensively be trusted as a historical document? This is especially important because the popular success of “They Shall Not Grow Old” means that it will henceforth become the gold standard for documentaries based on historical film footage. So let’s take a closer look at what Mr. Jackson has done—and not done….

Read the whole thing here.

* * *

The theatrical trailer for They Shall Not Grow Old:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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