Perhaps it is appropriate to mention that besides making this gripping and amazing documentary, Peter Jackson's employees also have
restored over 100 hours of WW1 footage for archival reasons.
The movie is impressive, to say the least. The colourized footage is so realistic, it really grabs you by the throat. The silent film has come to life with very meticulous lip reading and convincing setnoise of the battlefield. You see the effects the war had, shell-shocked men, the dead and the wounded in the sea of muddy trenches and craters. It grabbed me from start to end. The voices stay more or less anonymous and therefore they give the war a voice of its own. One big unknown soldier telling the story.
Jackson is very interested in WW1, he even has his own
model making company creating WW1 aircraft kits in 1.32, with amazing detail. This was mostly a labour of love, although it has cost a lot of money, to get this footage this far. The film images have been slowed down to normal speed, the 'missing' frames are computer generated, the cameras people worked with then, were hand-cranked or worked with a spring, which ran slower when further unwound. So to get the film moving in a steady 25fps was a big job. The colouring too. The film has been dedicated to his grandfather who served in the British Army 1909-1919.
One thing that was a bit missing from the film in all its horror was the relentless beating of an
artillery barrage fire. (set your speaker's volume back to a low volume. It is terrible. Horror.. Imagine you're in this for
hours...)