What the negative reviewers are failing to appreciate...
This is a mixed genre piece... Also, get over it.
Remember Knights Tale, and how effectively they used modern music to connect with a modern audience? "We will rock Rock you" for a jousting tournament? Remember Moulin Rouge! Solid examples of modern music, used in period pieces--to great effect, I'm thinking. We all imagine WW11 to the musical stylings of Vera Lynn, or can't imagine a WW1 piece without: It's a Long Way to Tipperary, all in black and white of course.
How does that hit our hearts now? This series has accurate uniform, armory, battles, replete with letters, and recorded statements from the participants involved. You don't get anymore historically accurate than this... Seriously, I can safely say it is a well researched portrayal. How about communicating that portrayal, so it is fully appreciated nowadays? How about expressing the extreme violence, nobleness and depravities of this period of history, in a language understandable to a modern day teenager--which were the fodder that we grinded up in this war? Perhaps, maybe, tell it in now, in this same young person's vocabulary, to express a greater truer impact of this conflict, in a way that will communicate to their own sensibilities? You know are youngsters now have currently been equally called out, and died in wars recently, that are perhaps stupider than this, and they just might benefit from what WW1 has to tell them. Why not make this piece accessible to them? This is nothing new in cinema, that hasn't been done many times over in the spirit of showing a generation, what previous generations have experienced. In my opinion, this is one of the stand outs, which makes history more tangible, something you can taste and feel, instead of a dusty old relic.
This is only a hundred years ago. We didn't have tails and were trying to avoid being eaten on the kalahari. The automobile, airplane, and telephone had already been incorporated into modern warfare.
They were listening to songs, like we are. This mixing of genres brings it home. It shows the relevancy of this war, and these young people, not it's antiquatedness. It was supposed to be: The war to end all Wars, and because it didn't, we might take pains to remind everyone of that fact.
Same assessment, for the modern in-camera portrayals, for the exact same reasons. YES!!! If the filmmakers of that day, could show what their generation went though, with the Pizazz this BBC production has, they would have been equally blown away, as I was watching this show.
Way to go BBC! Another brilliant example of how you are out-pacing other markets. A must see for anyone I can think of.
