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They Shall Not Grow Old

Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

They Shall Not Grow Old

They Shall Not Grow Old is a movie unlike any other ever made. Filmmaker Peter Jackson’s gift to us is his restoration of a film made during World War I. The original was faded, broken, and jerky. Jackson’s brilliance here lies in his determination to use the original film adding only color and music to bring it into this century. He adds no actors, no modern characters, and invites to stay for his on-camera comments after the film ends. I hope you stay.

From the one hundred hours of original film, Jackson chose to use just that of the British role to commemorate the “war to end all wars.” Because there are no modern injections, the audience watches young men from age fourteen up as they lie about age in order to join the army. In a big difference from today, the enlistees are looking forward to serving with their peers and we watch them blend as they get to know each other in their shared purpose.

Each has brought a backpack with one shirt, one pair of socks, a razor and a toothbrush for the duration. As we watch the physical training that toughens the new soldiers and teaches them how to use their guns, one says, “a man’s best friend is his rifle,” while wondering whether he would ever be able to shoot a man. When they are ordered to board ships for their unknown destination we know reality is about to hit them.

As they arrive the soldiers face the dead, bloody bodies of their peers lying in the trenches they had dug. And then comes the stench of the death of soldiers and horses, the lice, the rats and then the cloud of approaching poison gas. As they capture German soldiers, the British realize they are just boys, like themselves. They like them. And finally, the noise of battle turns into dead silence.

Dragged into holes and trenches with no one giving orders, a whole generation of two countries died, including one million British boys. As the war ended, those who lived returned to civilians who had no comprehension of what they had suffered. What hurts so is that more than a hundred years after this film was made, war is still the final solution to unsolvable disagreements among nations.

Peter Jackson uses his after-film screen time to explain how they created superb history from the broken old film. The filming is immediate and grueling because it brings war alive in a way we have never before seen. There are no actors here. Every man in this film was real.

When Jackson returns to walk the fields where the war unfolded a century ago, the trenches and holes and hills are covered with healthy green grass where one million men died. After this superb film, we are left with one question: why? War follows the inability of men to solve problems. Modern weaponry orders us to learn that lesson.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : They Shall Not Grow Old
Word Count : 499
Running Time: 1:39
Rating : R
Date : 24 February 2019

A Private War

Movie Review by Joan Ellis –

A Private War

Few things are more interesting than exploring the personality traits of a thoroughly unusual person. A Private War does just that in a compelling way as it gives us a portrait of Marie Colvin, a London Times reporter whose motivations are a fascinating puzzle. Her true story is handed to us by actor Rosamund Pike under the direction of Matthew Heineman in a riveting film.

It is easy to say that this is the story of a dedicated reporter who is emotionally caught in the multiple tragedies of the Middle Eastern wars that have been killing thousands of people during recent decades. What is harder is deciphering the degree of Marie Colvin’s determination to deliver to the world, at great personal risk, the reality of the erasure of those thousands of people.

As a columnist for the Times, Colvin knows that to convey tragedy she must go to the places where it is unfolding. “You have to find the truth of it. You have to find the human cost of the act.” Colvin loses an eye in a brutal battle in Sri Lanka and goes back for more as we watch her compulsive smoking and drinking begin to swallow her. Though her friend warns that she has post-traumatic stress disorder, that never reduces her emotional need to educate the public about the tragedy of the violence.

Her editor at the Times (Tom Hollander in a quiet, terrific performance), tells her “you have a God given talent to make people feel,” as he tries to keep her safe – to no avail. Her response to those who try to keep her home, “I feel we have failed if we don’t tell the horrors.”

By the time the film shifts to Syria in 2012, we understand on a deep level that this is a woman who refuses to live in safety while others are suffering. She watches a whole generation dying of sickness, cold, and bullets without medical doctors or medicines to help them as they die. When Colvin turns from writing to broadcasting about the violence, she becomes a visible target. She dies in the field and since then, 500,000 innocent people have died.

This determined columnist gave the world the truth, but the world, upset though we may be, stops following because we believe there is nothing we can do. The power of this movie is the truth conveyed by one columnist dedicated to forcing the world to see what the Syrian regime was doing to an entire generation of innocent people.

Marie Colvin rivets us to the truth of what unfolds in this world of death while most of us pass it by as we read the newspapers each day. Credit Rosamund Pike with a performance that she developed while studying TV recordings of Colvin’s voice and way of moving. Pike studied and understood the depth of Marie Colvin and hands her complexity to us in a riveting way.

Film Critic : Joan Ellis
Film Title : A Private War
Word Count : 497
Running Time : 1:46
Rating : R
Date : October 28, 2018