Gallipoli

I’ve been pissed off at Peter Weir ever since he messed up the Patrick O’Brian novels with his strange screenplay (and poor casting of the Stephen Maturin character) for Master and Commander. But back in 1981, before hubris was his middle name, Weir made a great film about war called Gallipoli. I am a bit behind in my movie watching. Almost twenty-five years behind. And, I will note that if I’ve written about films on this blog they tend to be very old ones. That’s because I can’t stand to go to movie theaters anymore. Gallipoli, like all good war movies is an antiwar film. At the end, the young hero is caught freeze-frame taking numerous machine gun rounds in the chest, his head knocked back, his back arced by the concussion.
His death, of course, is unnecessary and Weir’s film tells the story that leads to the inevitable final event. Young, unsophisticated Aussie men and boys from the outback and the cities enlist to keep the Germans or the Turks from taking Australia next. Fight them over there instead of on our own shores. And in the end, they are thrown against machine guns in a diversionary action that turns out to be unnecessary. The poignancy of their preparation, knowing they will die in the next few minutes, writing letters and pinning them to sandbags with momentos for loved ones is almost too much to bear. Watching Gallipoli or Private Ryan or Black Hawk Down or The Bridges at Toko Ri one wonders how men force themselves into the breach. We watch helplessly. One wonders what kind man, what kind of leader can be so crass as to sentence his own countrymen to anonymous death.
The Gallipoli Campaign was itself a kind of diversion, a waste of manpower and resources so vast that it nearly toppled the wartime government. Winston Churchill as Lord of the Admiralty lost his job. Hundreds of thousands of men were killed; many ships were lost and the entire episode made little difference in the outcome of The Great War.
Now Preznit Bush had come up with his third rationale for the deaths and injury to our troops and Iraqis in his own, private Gallipoli. Fight them over there instead of on our own shores.
He’ll throw another force into the breach and someone else will end, freeze frame, back arced, head forced back by the concussion in this great unnecessary diversion.

Comments

[noble]

I'm amazed you hadn't seen this before!!!! Shocked! I saw this when it came out in the theatres and have watched it probably ten times since then. One of the best anti-war films ever made. And Mel Gibson's best movie besides The Year of Living Dangerously. By the way, I tried to get you to watch this three or four times then gave up. But I'm glad you "discovered" it...finally.

[Lew]

I always liked this film as well. At the time it seemed like "Chariots of Fire" gone to war.