Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 (2014) User Reviews

Better deconstructed as still photographs

[FilmBuffAdam · 6/10 · 8 October 2015]

I found some of this footage fantastic, yet the overall result with the pretty constant drone of the Kronos Quartet (I normally like their work) just somewhat uninspired and hard going.

I felt that a lot of the footage would probably have worked a lot better if deconstructed a lot more and broken up into a much faster paced collage of ever mutating sequences.

As stills many moments of the footage was absolutely beautiful and at points due to its bad condition and smearing effect looked like a painterly work by Stan Brakhage.

Aside from what I understand to be the natural state of the nitrate footage there was no other beauty to be found in the resulting film.

Less a film, more an emotion

[sc-61 · 10/10 · 29 November 2019]

This is not a documentary. It's a collection of footage, some of it decayed, presenting not a story of the first world war, but a feeling, an emotional interpretation of the conflict. It's challenging in both what it shows and how it presents it. Soldiers sleeping in the open, in snow, in a trench. The decay of the film merging with a fire, blurring the bodies of the soldiers around them, as if hinting they too, soon, will be consumed.

If you're a fan of his work, this is one of his best. If you want a documentary on the First World War, there are some excellent ones that tell the story. If you want to actually get a little bit of the feeling of how it must have been - the dread, the confusion, the terror - then maybe you'll find that in this film.

A document, not a documentary

[mcgrew · 3/10 · 6 November 2015]

Mr. Morrison has done a very fine thing in rescuing what can be saved of these old films from themselves (nitrate stock film destroys itself over time, but at the time there was nothing better for the price.) But his presentation of them is maddeningly sterile.

Not once is there a narration or description of what we are seeing (except for the title). Not once is there context for whose army we're looking at, what they're doing, whether this is thought to be 'combat footage' (though most is, obviously, not), even what year it might be. Were there no historians standing nearby to ask? Even I, an amateur, can see some things (what helmets are worn, type of cannon or tank) that might help a novice viewer get some context.

As it stands, the film is mere a curiosity, a set of pictures books lying open to show random pictures with no captions. Mr. Morrison has obviously done a hugely difficult task, and done it well. But the payoff is missing. The viewer has nothing to latch onto, no way to learn anything about what is being shown to him or her.

And the music? You're better off turning the sound off. The music, often simply a group of string musicians literally sawing away at their instruments, is only distracting. It doesn't do anything (but presumably get some grant money to keep the saw-ers all in spritzers) to help the movie. Couldn't Mr. Morrison have used music, and recorded words of the period, having spent so much time and effort to show us film of the period? What could be better than gramophone recordings, tinny and imprecise, to go with the grainy, discolored, warped- image film? Why is it a nimrod like me can think of that, but not Mr. Morrison?

To better appreciate the work here, take the video, wash out all the color (so its all in the grey it originally was - the nitrate-deterioration-affected other colors are just jarring, to no use), and put on some scott joplin or something instead of the soundtrack.

It Stunk

[blademan-95603 · 1/10 · 1 October 2020]

From a History buff's perspective... it stunk. From a film aficionado's perspective... it stunk. From a music lover's perspective (Imagine if you will, two cats with their tails tied together in a burning building and the sounds they'd make. Then stretch your imagination a bit further to something even worse than that for a glimmer of an idea)... it stunk. So in summary... well, you get the picture. Fact of the matter is, the only good thing I can think of, if I were in fact forced to point to something, would be the narration. And there wasn't any.

Don't watch if you're prone to seizures...

[davidjdoyle-140-892335 · 17 January 2021]

Lot's of screen flashing and if you're prone to visual/optic induced seizures, don't watch this.

I realize that this is not a documentary but was it necessary to add overlays of fake degraded film effects to every clip. If you pay attention to the patterns and shapes of the burns/bubbles/mold/scratches you'll begin to see the repetition and it begins to become very annoying.

Apparently this was meant to be an "art piece" and art being subjective, many won't get it, and I'm in that camp. It was just a series of historical film footage with annoying, seizure inducing screen effects.