#633: Gallipoli
Life comes at you fast — but in wartime, death is faster
Initial release: August 7, 1981
Director: Peter Weir
The first World War — the Great War, the War to End All Wars, whatever you want to call it — had a singular effect on the men and boys of Europe: a call to glory, to defend the homeland, to serve the crown and become a man in the midst of it all. The end result was around ten million men dead, and twenty-three million wounded — all for a pointless war that exposed the inherent futility of the European balance of power. It was, in a sense, the end of innocence — for the world powers, and for the people who served those powers. Few know that better than the men who served in the disastrous Gallipoli landings, the centerpiece of Gallipoli, appropriately-titled film by Peter Weir.
It is 1915. Two world-class sprinters, Archy and Frank, meet at an athletics carnival. Archy, an 18-year-old farmer from the outback, longs to join up with the Australian army and fight in the war; Frank is an out-of-work rail man who seeks upward mobility and deeply resents the British Crown as the son of an Irish immigrant, but happily helps Archy lie his way into the service. A broke Frank is eventually convinced to join up in the hopes of furthering his career, but as he can’t ride a horse, he and Archy — who have become good friends after the race they competed in — are separated. He makes new friends in the infantry, but when given the opportunity to join the Light Brigade and serve with Archy as a footman he takes it. But none of the men are prepared for the bright, sunny hell on earth that is the beaches at Gallipoli…
Though Gallipoli features World War I, it’s not really about the war, not in the sense we usually think war movies typically are. The majority of the film isn’t even set in Gallipoli! Rather, it’s about the men and boys who fought in it; in that sense, it’s like an Australian take on All Quiet on the Western Front. So the film is pretty heavily frontloaded with the relationship between these two young friends — played by budding Australian TV movie regular Mark Lee and a fetal Mel Gibson, almost unrecognizable now that he’s a nearly-70-year-old raving tradcath weirdo. In a sense the story is mostly Archy’s — the film opens with him in the outback, training with his uncle and helping on the family farm, with the initial conflict being that between his desire to join up (despite being underage) and his uncle’s desire to make him a track star. We don’t meet Frank until the day of the race, when he bets a sizable amount of money on himself (and loses it by a hair.)
It’s Archy who drives most of the plot: when they try to get to Perth, it’s Archy who decides to take a shortcut across a 50-mile dry lake bed despite Frank’s protestations, it’s Archy joining up being what ultimately inspires Frank to do the same, it’s Archy’s decision to hand off an important messenger run to Frank to protect him that seals his own fate. That he disappears from the movie for a while as we watch Frank make friends — and cause trouble — in Cairo, only serves to emphasize Archy’s importance when they meet each other again in a training exercise. And of course, it’s Archy who serves as the film’s bookends — or, at least, the mantra he is taught by his uncle.
Gallipoli is one of those films that are pretty important to the Australian identity as seen through the silver screen — up there with Picnic at Hanging Rock, Breaker Morant, and of course Mad Max. I am not Australian and it occurs to me I don’t know very many Australians (more than zero, probably less than five) — but I can see how Peter Weir’s film would have a profound effect on the national psyche, an examination of a deep wound in the Australian memory, a sacred moment in Australian history. After all, what was World War I but a series of deep wounds on every nation that participated in it?
Don’t go into this film expecting a thrilling tale of battle — it’s the wrong war for that, let’s be real, but also the battle itself is only the final chapter. Like I said earlier, it’s about Archy and Frank, and the loss of innocence. So instead, marvel in the subtle, but impressive camera work, the use of music, and the proof that Mel Gibson, for all his many, many flaws, is (or at least was) an absolutely fantastic actor with the kind of bright, piercing eyes that seem to stare right into your soul.
Gallipoli can be a tough watch. Leaving aside the rather insensitive portrayal of the residents of Cairo — stuff like that just kind of comes with the territory with most films older than twenty or thirty years, unfortunately — the final sequence is a gut punch, especially since you know exactly what’s going to happen — it’s not that the film telegraphs it, but rather that this is just what World War I was — the end of history, the closure of an uneasy, but optimistic era and the beginning of a new, bloody century.
We weep with Australia, for their wounds are our wounds.
