Oh, Oh, Oh, What a Lovely War
or
Like All the Hobs of Hell...
World War I has drifted into the world of fiction and representation now. What we know of "The War to End All Wars" is what we read in books or see in films. But that'll bring a false impression, particularly if you believe Wonder Woman fought in it. The witnesses are dead, and a mention of the Archduke Ferdinand or the Ottoman Empire will merely illicit blank stares. Maybe someone will know it introduced aerial bombing and mustard gas, but those have become over-shadowed by civilian bombing, atomic incineration, napalm, and death-by-video-games drones. Maybe it's remembered for it's aftermath, creating the dispiritment in Germany that could only be overcome by a hyperbolic dictator (happens all too frequently), or for its "lost generation" (happens every war), or that inspired a lot of great literature (happens less and less), than it is for killing over 19 million people.
World War I is a figment now, not a memory, more than 100 years after the fact. So Britain's Imperial War Museum asked director Peter Jackson (a bit of a WWI buff and collector himself) if he wanted to make a film commemorating the war if he could make "something unique and original" (which he admits he had no clue what that might entail).
But, he gave it a go and the IWM gave him their stores of WWI footage and interviews. The film was also 100 years old and showed it. This was silent footage, hand-cranked (at various speeds), some of which had been seen (and duplicated many times) and others that were in such disrepair or dark that they had never been looked at. In all, there were 100 hours of silent footage from the era, along with 600 hours of interviews—filmed—with WWI veterans from the past.
While Jackson went over the interviews, work began in restoring the footage to restore and, in some cases, save the original film. They were painstakingly digitized, exposure-corrected, and sharpened. There was so much footage of the trench-life at the front that eventually the story emerged for Jackson that was "unique and original"—the story about the life of the soldier during WWI.
There are no "talking heads" to interrupt the flow of authentic images, just the disembodied voices of the soldiers who entered the service as young men—often too young—and emerged changed. Those changes, brought on by the experiences they recount, are spelled out early, over footage that has merely had speed conversion done to it to off-set the imprecise hand-cranking done to make it, but still in black and white, as they recount their initial enthusiasm ("we couldn't possibly lose") to their post-war perspective ("if I can survive this, I can survive anything") and their training and transportation to France.
But, once they get to the battlefield, the images change to Jackson's colorization—vivid color that remains that way, even if the image itself is faded or indistinct. It transforms the material, giving it an immediacy, jolting you forward in time, giving the material over 100 years old, the impression it was made yesterday. It is often eerie, but looks realistically saturated (Jackson even visited the locations to get a sense of what the hardest thing to colorize, the grass of the fields, looked like to make sure it was altered as believably as possible to avoid any perceptive dis-connect.
At the same time, with images of soldiers talking, forensic lip-readers were employed to try and ascertain what was photographed being said (in most cases, because movie camera were a new sight for the soldiers, a lot of it was "Look, we're being filmed" or "Hi, Mom!"—some of the soldiers can be seen walking into obstacles, so distracting is the sight of the movie cameras) and reproduced by British actors, and sound provided by foley artists meticulously performing the sounds with period-appropriate equipment and clothing.
This work draws you in, separating the distance that the more opaque silent black-and-white footage imposes, making the images intimate and sometimes horrifying.
It's often breath-taking, and at times overwhelming, and—with the testimony of the soldiers as guide—feels true and relatable, especially in the imaging of life in the trenches (which, contrary to recreations where not straight lines, but more jagged and irregular to discourage precise targeting by explosive shells). One also gets the sense—as the narrated accounts state, that the war changed character over the years it took place, as new tactics and new technology advanced over its course and were put into "play" during the war-years.
It is stunning work and amazing to behold and makes the first of the world wars not a thing of the past, but of a shared past, of how people like us went through a devastating conflict and emerged...or did not.
There's an old folk-song ("Down by the Riverside") with the line "ain't gonna study war no more,"and while, on the surface, it seems like a nice sentiment, it should go hand in falconer's glove with the caution that those who don't know History are doomed to repeat it.* The result of WWI was the break-up of a few Empires and the re-drawing of lines on maps. It doesn't seem worth it when you see the cost in so many lives taken away, squandered. They Shall Never Grow Old gives some time to those lives cut short for the re-configuration of some borders, imaginary notations of ink written, in actuality, with blood.
For the Fallen by Robert Laurence Binyon
21-September-1914
With proud thanksgiving, a mother for her children,
England mourns for her dead across the sea.
Flesh of her flesh they were, spirit of her spirit,
Fallen in the cause of the free.
Solemn the drums thrill: Death august and royal
Sings sorrow up into immortal spheres.
There is music in the midst of desolation
And a glory that shines upon our tears.
They went with songs to the battle, they were young,
Straight of limb, true of eye, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
They mingle not with their laughing comrades again;
They sit no more at familiar tables of home;
They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;
They sleep beyond England's foam.
But where our desires are and our hopes profound,
Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,
To the innermost heart of their own land they are known
As the stars are known to the Night;
As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.
* ... with the asterisked addendum that cautions about people who deny History or just don't believe it.
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| Soldiers blinded by mustard gas leave the field |
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