On paper, They Shall Not Grow Old’s concept doesn’t seem exciting: interviews of old soldiers reminiscing about The Great War are superimposed on archival footage from the same era. Sounds straightforward enough. Except, there’s an art to Jackon’s approach to the film. For one, the interviews are brought to life by convincing voice actors. For another, the film footage is stitched together in such a way that it tells its own story. Jackson cuts to some of the same faces repeatedly, as if to suggest they’re the ones the current narrator is referring to, and at one point, nearly all of the film is colorized—by hand, mind you, no need for AI here. There are no dates, names, or even places to be found here, so it’s not your typical war documentary. But it is filled with specificities you won’t normally read about in books. The soldiers tell detailed accounts of how they relieved themselves in the trenches, what kind of beer they got to enjoy, how and they met up with girls. But the grim parts are there too, like how they witnessed heads blowing up and people dying from mere infections to bullets. This, more than anything, feels like a raw account of the war, from people you’ve met firsthand.

The colorized footage is chillingly good. I’m also still scratching my head about how gleeful the survivors sound recounting the war. One of them called it “like a camping holiday with a slight spice of danger.” What a world of difference between this lot and those who lived through World War II (and every other war since).