Movie Review: THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD, Narrated By Those Who Did

Source: archives, Imperial War Museum, London (colorized)

It was my grandfather's experiences in WWI that led him to teach his only child, my father, who passed it along to us: Don't believe them when they say the next war is a good war; there is no such thing. Brooks Elliott Savage was wounded on the 11th day of the 11th month, basically the 11th hour of the war, by shrapnel and then mustard gas. He suffered through a long recovery and it took his parents in Skowhegan, Maine most of a year to even find him. 

Brooks, who had marched off as an idealistic high school graduate, was talking to his son about the Korean War, hyped at the time as crucial to fending off communism emanating from Red China. My dad went anyway after his dad died, but by then it was post-combat. Still, the suffering of the Korean people who had lost millions of family members and couldn't feed their kids made an impression on him.

Source: archives, Imperial War Museum, London (colorized)

War is hell, is what he taught us. There's nothing glorious about living the rest of your life with a bum leg, bad lungs, and a guilty conscience.

THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD is an historical marvel,  but it isn't a good film. Cobbled together from archival footage as a project of the Imperial War Museum in England by New Zealand director Sir Peter Jackson (Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies), the documentary applies modern technology to restore images and insert sound tracks. Lip reading was used to render some of the dialogue, but most is voice over narration drawn from BBC oral history interviews with veterans. The title of the film is never explained; we are meant to understand that it is a reference to a poem glorifying the "Great War" at its inception. 

They shall grow not old; as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

wrote Robert Laurence Binyon in "For the Fallen," published in 1914.

I beg to differ, as the years have condemned the one million imperial troops who died in the scramble for the colonial spoils of the unraveling Ottoman Empire. To a student of history like me, WWI set off a bloody chain of events that led directly to WWII and thence to the Zionist project in Palestine and the so-called War on Terror (or WWIII if you prefer). As the grandmother of a friend remarked after returning from an organizing meeting in NYC as the U.S. prepared to enter WWI, This whole thing is about nothing more than Mosul Oil.

Thus, the city of Mosul in what is now Iraq has been ravaged by battle after battle justified by the ideology du jour. The Muslim extremists largely funded by the empire are the enemy now, right?

Or maybe the war on communism is back on again as Russia sits astride her thawing permafrost full of petroleum reserves? Certainly Venezuela is in the empire's cross hairs now, because socialism and oil just don't mix well for the former Exxon executives in Washington DC.

Source: archives, Imperial War Museum, London (colorized)

No mention of any of that in Jackson's disingenuous personal introduction to his film. He didn't want to impose his views, he tells viewers, as if the curating and assembling of two hours of footage from the hundreds of hours collected by the museum were a morally neutral act devoid of political agency.

Like Ken Burns' VIETNAM WAR documentary, this film made to mark an important anniversary of an imperial war is the wolf of war porn in the sheep's clothing of archival footage.

Remember how THE WIZARD OF OZ burst into technicolor to signal that Dorothy (Judy Garland) is not in Kansas anymore? THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD bursts into colorization to signal that the scrawny teens of working class England have entered the Great War. With their undernourished limbs whipped into shape by regular meals and bullying drill sergeants, they start to resemble an imperial army. As long as they keep their mouths shut; nothing, apparently, would be done about their fantastically bad teeth. The rot lurking in their goofy smiles as they head off for their great adventure is an omen.

Source: archives, Imperial War Museum, London (colorized)

The industrial scale carnage is no surprise to us but it was to many of the lads. Amid the cacophony one can almost hear the ka-ching of the cash register as merchants of death offscreen supply the machinery of war. Real human beings firing missile after missile aren't worth much and are easily replaced amid the sophisticated propaganda campaigns and coward-shaming back home.

It's a deeply sexist film, but such an ugly and amoral picture of human endeavor made me proud to be an anti-military woman. There are no nurses ever at any point in the film, which is historically ignorant, nor suffragette antiwar activists. Just a few moms who don't want their sons mangled, and lots of prostitutes. As the credits roll, we're treated to a lengthy version of a contemporaneous song with rude lyrics about women, for example:

Oh, Mademoiselle from Armentieres, Parlez-vous? (repeat) 

She'll do it for wine, she'll do it for rum, 

And sometimes for chocolate or chewing gum!

It's unclear to me why Jackson displays his lack of analysis or historical perspective devoid of ethics as if they were sources of pride. Sexism -- and racism -- hiding behind historical drama is a hallmark of what passes for Anglo culture in the 21st century.

It may be true, but it's nothing to be proud of.