I watched Peter Jackson's recolorized WWI footage last night before going to bed. It's one of the most extraordinary things I've seen. thttps://www.indiewire.com/2018/10/peter-jackson-world-war-one-footage-restored-colorized-1202010938/
I've read book after book about this war, volumes upon volume of poetry-- Sassoon, Owen, Graves; looked at one monument after another, one endless list of names in a tiny village after the next, crammed down information about this war for final exams,
heard lecture after lecture about it, but I can't ever remember before having nightmares about it. Last night I had the most awful nightmares. I still feel the way one does after having nightmares--11:13 a.m., but I can't shake the horror.
Nothing I've read or seen has made those men and that horror seem so real to me. It didn't help that one of my cats dragged a bit hunk of cat food into the bed, so my bed really did smell of rotting, decomposing flesh.
I didn't realize that's what it was until I woke up, though. I thought the images were so powerful that I could smell it.
Peter Jackson did something very important with that footage--I'd seen it before, over and over, but it just never had that effect on me.
Peter Jackson did something very important with that footage--I'd seen it before, over and over, but it just never had that effect on me.
It strips away all the natural defense mechanisms, all the ways you mentally put the horror at a remove. The war didn't happen to strange, jerking figures who moved around in black and white. It didn't happen "long ago," 100 years is nothing; many of us will live that long.
Within very recent memory, much of the world participated in this. Thought it was a good idea. We're still that species. We haven't become a fundamentally different one.
