«We will have to see [Peter] Jackson's film to judge properly. But there is a fundamental issue here about how we treat our actuality film archives. WWI was filmed in monochrome (a tiny amount of colour film was shot during the war in the Kinemacolor process, of which just two minutes survives, showing the British fleet off Scapa Flow in 1915). To understand that inheritance we must look at it for what it is. Colourising archive actuality film does not bring us closer to our ancestors; it increases the distance between us. It threatens to make the WWI film archive we have inherited meaningless, because we can no longer look at it sympathetically. It's the effort that creates the understanding.
Yes, on some occasions archive film can and should be manipulated for particular ends. It need not always be treated reverently in its original form alone — that way elitism lies.
But, to my mind, using it to show what it is not does more damage than good. If we want people to understand the past, we should not be colouring it.»
Na edição de Abril da revista Sight & Sound, Luke McKerman salienta os paradoxos que rodeiam o anunciado documentário de Peter Jackson sobre a Primeira Guerra Mundial, nomeadamente a decisão de colorir imagens em movimento do conflito que foram, originalmente, registadas em formatos monocromáticos.
[Imagem: ScreenRant].
