On the centenary of the end of First World War, Academy Award-winner Peter Jackson presents the World Premiere of an extraordinary new work showing the Great War as you have never seen it. Source - YouTube/Trafalgar Releasing
Peter Jackson's World War I film has been met with five star reviews after premiering in London today.
They Shall Not Grow Old sees Jackson, who is both producer and director, transform 100-year-old footage from World War I into colour.
The three-time Oscar-winning film-maker has taken 100-year-old footage from London's Imperial War Museum archives and carefully re-mastered it for the first time to mark the centenary of the conflict between 1914 and 1918.
Over four years Jackson edited hundreds of videos to produce the final 90-minute piece which is narrated with interviews from 120 veterans, from 600 clips recorded in 1964.
The film premiered at the London Film Festival and simultaneously in theatres across Britian with reviewers quick to rave about this new kind of historical documentary.
The Daily Telegraph says Jackson has "crafted an historical portrait of matchless immediacy and power, in which young souls lost in a century-old war stare out across the years and meet our gaze", giving the film five stars.
"It is an encounter with the past that feels exhilaratingly present-tense."
Reviewer Robbie Collin adds: "The carnage is depicted with total fearlessness and frankness: flies swarm on corpses, flesh is shown torn up like rags, soldiers are seen trembling with shell shock, while the shells themselves explode with terrifying fury and speed."
Also giving it five stars, The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw says the effect of using technology to bring these soldiers unforgettably back to life is "electrifying".
"The soldiers are returned to an eerie, hyperreal kind of life in front of our eyes, like ghosts or figures summoned up in a séance. The faces are unforgettable."
The review goes on to say: "The colourisation, and everything else, is a kind of alienation shock tactic as well as a means of enfolding you in the experience.
"It is an indirect way of reminding you that this really did happen to people like you and me."
Prince William and Peter Jackson attend the world premiere of They Shall Not Grow Old. Photo / Getty Images
The Times said that Jackson brings the soldiers to life in "the most extraordinary way", also giving it a rating of five stars.
"Jackson combines cutting-edge special effects with impeccable curatorial instincts to bring the First World War to life in a way that outmatches and outclasses even the best efforts of movie fiction."
