Post by Ryan_MYeah on Jan 22, 2019 3:11:00 GMT
Okay, so I saw this a while ago, and I honestly admired this movie more than I actually liked it.
While the technical accomplishments are undeniably impressive, I was left very cold by it. And the reason for that is because of just how broad a scope it paints itself in. Rather than be some all encompassing portrait of WW1, Peter Jackson instead intends to specifically cover the people on the English front, like more of a humanist drama (coining it “a non-academic recount for non-academics”). He pulls an Amy by pulling from hours upon hours of interviews from WW1 vets, and having them serve as the offscreen narrators.
Unfortunately, while this is valiant in intention, it backfired for me. With a whopping *114* interviewees listed, not a single one of them feels like they get a chance to make their mark. You never get a sense of who those people were, especially because many of their voices actually begin blending in with one another. And I know documentaries play differently to narrative cinema, but even so, I like to have one, or at least a few centralized subjects to gravitate to so I have emotional context (Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was a masterclass in that regard), but with the amount the film leaves you to keep track of here, it just becomes dry (my most common complaint with documentaries). Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a robotic film at all, and Peej is way more invested here than The Hobbit, but it just exhausts me by the time it was over.
As such, it’s the technical pedigree and the beautiful footage restoration that carried the film for me. And while it takes 25 minutes before it actually appears (and could have done away with the constant voiceovers, and relied more on the brilliant sound work), it is absolutely beautiful to look at, feeling like a beautiful time capsule of vivid, but intentionally washed out color, and admittedly some of the best 3D I’ve ever seen at a movie. There was a thirty minute making of featurette with Peej immediately after, showing the lengths he and his team went to to restore and enhance the footage, and *that* was more engaging to me than the actual film.
The achievement is noble, and I’m glad it exists, but it could have been more powerful than it was.
While the technical accomplishments are undeniably impressive, I was left very cold by it. And the reason for that is because of just how broad a scope it paints itself in. Rather than be some all encompassing portrait of WW1, Peter Jackson instead intends to specifically cover the people on the English front, like more of a humanist drama (coining it “a non-academic recount for non-academics”). He pulls an Amy by pulling from hours upon hours of interviews from WW1 vets, and having them serve as the offscreen narrators.
Unfortunately, while this is valiant in intention, it backfired for me. With a whopping *114* interviewees listed, not a single one of them feels like they get a chance to make their mark. You never get a sense of who those people were, especially because many of their voices actually begin blending in with one another. And I know documentaries play differently to narrative cinema, but even so, I like to have one, or at least a few centralized subjects to gravitate to so I have emotional context (Won’t You Be My Neighbor? was a masterclass in that regard), but with the amount the film leaves you to keep track of here, it just becomes dry (my most common complaint with documentaries). Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t a robotic film at all, and Peej is way more invested here than The Hobbit, but it just exhausts me by the time it was over.
As such, it’s the technical pedigree and the beautiful footage restoration that carried the film for me. And while it takes 25 minutes before it actually appears (and could have done away with the constant voiceovers, and relied more on the brilliant sound work), it is absolutely beautiful to look at, feeling like a beautiful time capsule of vivid, but intentionally washed out color, and admittedly some of the best 3D I’ve ever seen at a movie. There was a thirty minute making of featurette with Peej immediately after, showing the lengths he and his team went to to restore and enhance the footage, and *that* was more engaging to me than the actual film.
The achievement is noble, and I’m glad it exists, but it could have been more powerful than it was.