They Will Not Grow Old

Went to the cinema this afternoon to watch the Peter Jackson documentary They Will Not Grow Old.  I think it aired on BBC over the Armistice weekend, but not in the US - and this was one of only 2 days on which they are showing it at cinemas, so I thought I'd go watch it on the big screen in 3D.  And it was good - though I still think impossible to try to humanize an inhumane war.  I'm not sure whether the 3D really worked - I think it added a little bit too much artificiality to the film.  At the screening we also got an extra 30 minute behind the scenes look at how they made the film - and it kind of revealed a lot of the subjectivity that went into colorizing the film, adding sound, etc.  But I liked the intimacy that the film gave to the war, and some of the people who took part (and probably died) in it.  The actual interviews that made up the commentary would be really interesting by themselves, but in combination with the video footage it does make for an important historical document of one of the saddest chapters of the 20th century.