My grandfather was a bugler and gassed at Passchendaele. I have only seen black and white photos of him and he died long after the Great War, but before I was born.
Like most British people of my age I have a certain image of WW1 influenced by Wilfred Owen and Blackadder. Peter Jackson has done a truly remarkable thing and transported me back in time. I found myself laughing, feeling sadness and above all a huge sense of identification with the ordinary lads and men who made up the British forces in this terrible war.
To see green grass, red poppies and ordinary men speaking like I do, but from 100 years ago, was as moving as anything I can ever remember watching in a film. The understated, conversational acknowledgement of the overall sense of anticlimax at the end of the war was as revelatory as it was honest. It spoke more eloquently about the pompousity of politicians and true feelings of the common man than a thousand poems or polemics ever could.
The voices I heard and the images of those men will stay with me. Well done Peter Jackson for creating an instant classic.
Like most British people of my age I have a certain image of WW1 influenced by Wilfred Owen and Blackadder. Peter Jackson has done a truly remarkable thing and transported me back in time. I found myself laughing, feeling sadness and above all a huge sense of identification with the ordinary lads and men who made up the British forces in this terrible war.
To see green grass, red poppies and ordinary men speaking like I do, but from 100 years ago, was as moving as anything I can ever remember watching in a film. The understated, conversational acknowledgement of the overall sense of anticlimax at the end of the war was as revelatory as it was honest. It spoke more eloquently about the pompousity of politicians and true feelings of the common man than a thousand poems or polemics ever could.
The voices I heard and the images of those men will stay with me. Well done Peter Jackson for creating an instant classic.