Peter Jackson's documentary about the thrills and horrors of World War I, "They Shall Not Grow Old," uses state-of-the-art technology to bring history to life so vividly that it feels almost supernatural. Using digital restoration techniques, Jackson turns black-and-white, century-old footage of long-dead soldiers into richly colored images that brim with expressive energy. The overall effect is both wonderful and spooky, like an unexpectedly successful seance.
Why is Jackson, best known for his fantastical "Lord of the Rings" films, making a historical documentary? The New Zealand-born director was commissioned by Britain's Imperial War Museum and the U.K. arts program 14-18 NOW (formed to celebrate the Great War's centenary) to create this film. His only brief was to use the museum's archives, a treasure trove of 23,000 hours of moving images and 33,000 sound recordings.
Jackson took an unorthodox approach when putting his material together: no reenactments, no talking-head interviews, no historians or experts _ just real war-time footage accompanied by first-person audio accounts. The narrators are never seen or even identified. As a result, the movie has a kind of storybook feel, as though the voices we're hearing are producing the images in our heads.
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