After reading it, I recommended it to a person who likes history, but they completely refused to open it, saying that World War I was too far away. Yeah, WW1 is so far away, my last movie about WW1 was "1917", if it wasn't for it, I'd have forgotten that WW1 was taught in a history teacher's class from 1914 to 1918, also Forget that World War I started with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary in Sarajevo, two years after Sun Yat-sen launched the Xinhai Revolution in 1912. I don't like "1917". The awesome and dazzling shooting techniques don't make me feel advanced, but dazed, dazed by the narrow target area in front of me and the constantly shaking front, and the story of the film is king in the back of my mind. No way, after watching thousands of movies, I still feel that the core of the movie is the story, and any technology is just a means of auxiliary expression. The technology that promotes the story is a good technology, otherwise it will be a disservice, and it is better not to have it.
"They Don't Grow Old" is not a story at all, it is a fragment and detail of vivid life in a grand historical context. The director used a very powerful technique to repay the scene at that time, but he did not let us feel the existence of the technique. This is the great thing. Dumbly, I thought this was a documentary from World War I. It wasn't. It was a World War I documentary story created by Peter based on documentary images, restored, colored, and dubbed. You can think those characters are real, The smile is real, the image is real, the script and the logic of the story before and after are created.
There has never been a film that can restore such war details: four soldiers squatted on a wooden board to poop and fell into a cesspool. The rats that live on the carrion of the corpse are eaten by the soldiers. When the water accumulates in the trenches, the boots and the water freeze together, and the feet show black and yellow gangrene. It truly feels that there are no heroes in the war, only survivors. No heroic person should survive.
The title of the film is very poetic, They shall not grow old, let us sigh for those lives that will not continue to grow old. Even if the flower of life falls before it blooms, it still leaves behind its faint fragrance.
The original poem is reproduced below for reference only. I don't really like it, I just like this sentence as the title of the movie.
For the Fallen
BY LAURENCE BINYON
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.
Postscript: Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings series has millions of fans around the world, and we (my sons and I) are not very cold, but this film is enough to prove to all audiences that this is an amazing director.
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