Film Review
The inexpressible horror and futility of war are powerfully evoked in
the final excruciating ten minutes of Peter Weir's
Gallipoli, but it is not the
climactic battle scene of this film that makes it such a poignant and
memorable piece of cinema. Rather, it is the heartrending
depiction of one young man's slow loss of innocence as he comes
face-to-face with the realities of war and the callous injustices of
which mankind is capable.
Gallipoli
is also a deeply affecting study in friendship and male bonding, a
subject that is rarely tackled with as much sensitivity and
seriousness. More than anything, it is the film's understated
humanity and stark visual poetry that makes it one of the great
landmarks in Australian cinema.
If were to be judged solely as a war film
Gallipoli would be somewhat
lacking. Almost two-third's of the film's run time has elapsed
before we are projected into the theatre of war, and what then ensues
is really little more than a barrage of all the old WWI clichés,
liberally splattered with some predictably sour Aussie anti-British
sentiment. The film's final third would have no impact whatever
were it not for the slow-paced buddy idyll that precedes it, set in the
eerily sparse landscape of rural Australia. It is here that we
are introduced to the two main characters, a chalk-and-cheese pair
consisting of an idealistic 18-year-old with hopes of becoming a
professional athlete and a slightly older man with a more jaundiced
view of life - played respectively by newcomer Mark Lee and
soon-to-become-megastar Mel Gibson, both excellent beyond words.
Right from the outset we know how the film is going to pan out.
There is an inevitability about the tragic ending which is felt every
inch of the way as the narrative wends its all too predictable course,
like a lorry-load of cattle being driven to the slaughterhouse.
The only character who seems oblivious to how things are going to turn
out is Mark Lee's cutely naive Archy Hamilton, a character who is
pointedly emblematic of a generation of young men whose innocence and
idealism made them the perfect victims for one of the most atrocious
criminal enterprises in human history. (Surely I am not alone in
thinking that WWI was not a tragedy but a
crime of staggering proportions,
perpetrated by cynically minded imperialists against a generation of
innocents who had no idea what they were being led into.).
The prize of glory, easily and swiftly won in armed combat, was one
that few in Archy's position could resist, but in truth it was a
Fata Morgana, a delusion that would
lead inexorably to a vicious death and an untimely grave. Archy's
childlike idealism is all the more evident when it is set aside the
squawking cynicism of his friend, Frank. Yet even Frank falls for
the lie that a better future awaits him if he enlists. Or is that
Frank feels in some way responsible for Archy, having been the one who
forged his birth certificate and thereby made it possible for him to
join up? If Archy's fate is sealed by idealism, Frank's is
determined by something just as powerful, the indissoluble bonds of
friendship.
There is a romanticism to
Gallipoli
which makes it feel much more like a love story than a classic war
film. In the wastelands of Australia the war in Europe seems a
very long way away, and the prospect of Hell in the trenches feels just
as remote as a burgeoning friendship monopolises our attention. It's
Brideshead Revisited meets
Chariots of Fire, but the sense of
impending disaster is always at the back of our minds, and we know that
at least one, if not both, of the protagonists is destined to end up a
bullet-riddled pile of maggot meat before the story is told.
Peter Weir brings an epic feel to even the film's most intimate scenes,
filling the screen with breathtaking panoramic vistas that constantly
remind us of the smallness of his characters in the grand scheme of
things. The performances, so real and so truthful, are the only
things that prevent us from mistaking the film for a lurid flight of
fancy.
The film's grandiose beauty, its moments of
introspection given a solemn gravity by Albinoni's Adagio in G minor,
persists even when the action moves to the bullet-sizzling battlefront in Turkey. But it
is here that the prospect of impending tragedy acquires a tangible
presence. The ending is of course what we had expected, but
coming as it does after a long and stirring meditation on friendship
and coming-of-age, it hits us with an excruciating poignancy. We
are left stunned, not merely by the injustice of war, but by a sickening
awareness of man's inherent knack of destroying all that which is
precious and beautiful on the flimsiest of pretexts.
Gallipoli may not be cinema's
greatest war film but its final few minutes have a genuinely
heart-shattering impact, and it is hard to think of another film that
expresses the human cost of the so-called Great War with such
blistering succinctness.
© James Travers 2014
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Film Synopsis
Western Australia, 1915. Archy Hamilton is an 18-year-old rancher
who has aspirations of becoming a champion sprinter. When he
hears of the Australian military campaign in the Dardanelles he makes
up his mind to enlist, although he is three years under age and knows
that his family will try to prevent him from doing so. At
an athletics carnival he wins a sprinting competition, much to the
chagrin of fellow competitor Frank Dunne, an out-of-work railway
employee who had counted on winning the race to solve his present money
problems. The two young men form an instant friendship and are
soon undertaking a gruelling trek across country to Perth, where Archy
intends to enlist in the Australian Imperial Force. The older and
more cynical Frank has no intention of fighting what he believes to be
a British war but is finally persuaded by Archy to sign up. Archy
ends up in the Light Horse Brigade, Frank in the infantry. Six
months later, the two friends are delighted to be reunited in Cairo,
where they await their first taste of active service. It comes
soon enough. Shipped to Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula in
Turkey, they must endure several days of boredom in the trenches.
Then the day comes when Frank and Archy are to participate in a
diversionary attack on a Turkish stronghold. It is to be one of
the bloodiest and most futile battles of the entire war...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.