Gallipoli

#3 in my ranking of Peter Weir’s filmography.

The Australians really do hold the Battle of the Nek against the English, don’t they? I mean, in a war filled with giant wastes of life, the massacre of Australian soldiers during the Gallipoli Campaign was small in scale in comparison but an important symbolic loss, especially for the new nation that had only existed for fifteen years after Parliament had granted the commonwealth independence to govern itself. They were supposedly independent, not subject but equal to the nation of Britain, and yet three hundred of their young men were thrown into a shredder for no purpose because the British command demanded it. I question the film’s portrayal of the specifics because I largely don’t trust film to give accurate portrayals of history, but Peter Weir’s story of two young men in that meat grinder is one of the most compelling portraits of friendship in war.

Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) and Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson) are two young Australian runners who are in competition with breaking records for the hundred meter dash. They start the film as strangers, Archy from the country and Frank from Perth, and connect when Archy beats Frank at a regional meet with scarred feet. Archy isn’t completely disinterested in the war, though. He has an innate sense of nationalism about doing his duty for his country while Frank simply dismisses it as hogwash and not something that really applies to his life in Australia. There’s a moment where they cross a desert plain to get from a remote station to Perth on foot, and they come across a nomad who doesn’t even have an idea that there is a war, much less any conception of why Australians are fighting Turks in a war against Germany. Australia is in isolation, and the yearning to take part in a fight half a world a way feels unnatural and remote to the lives of Australians.

They, of course, end up joining up. Archy lies about his age in Perth where no one knows him and gets onboard the light cavalry. Frank meets up with some old railroad buddies and joins the infantry because he has no where else to go and his sense of camaraderie and friendship gets him to go along, and the movie moves to Egypt where it gets curious. What happens in Egypt is largely centered around Frank (the first third mostly centered around Archy), and it’s a view of a group of four Australian friends rampaging around Egypt, insulting British officers, tearing up the wrong local’s shop because they think one of them was bamboozled, and getting into a wargame with fellow Australian soldiers that turns into an unserious wrestling match at which Frank and Archy reunite. As I was watching this section, I was confused, especially the way they tear up the shop without care, and it slowly dawned on me: these men are actually children. They’re innocents who don’t know the ways of the world being too young to have learned them. Their efforts at engaging the world are the efforts of young boys, not men, and I think that view gets reinforced by their commanding officer Major Barton (Bill Hunter).

Towards the end of their time in Egypt, Archy has to deliver a message to Barton, and Frank gets past the guard at the door of the officer’s party pretending he has his own message. When Barton reads the message, he’s ready to kick Frank out because it’s obvious that he’s just snuck in for a good time, but Barton reads the message saying that the unit is going to Gallipoli the next day, and he lets the boys have their fun. He knows what’s coming on some level, and he doesn’t want to deny them the few good times they may have left.

The action at Gallipoli is a different flavor of one stalemate during WWI. Trenches built in the dry, arid environment of the Gallipoli peninsula, but still no movement from one to the other for months on end with the British commander Colonel Robinson (John Morris) demanding the one final blow to the Turks that will let the British march straight to Constantinople. It all, of course, comes to The Battle of the Nek, an effort by the British to break through on one side while a British naval forces lands ground forces on the other side of the peninsula. Because of a lack of coordination in timing, the bombardment from artillery ends too early which allows the Turks to retake their places on their own line before a single Australian soldier has gotten into No Man’s Land.

Now, where I doubt the history is in the flavors of what’s going on here. Robinson is too pig-headed. Barton is too purely driven. It may be 100% true that they were like this, but in a film with a polemic point about how the British are a-holes to be hated by every Australian, I have my doubts.

And it doesn’t affect my appreciation of the film at all. Maybe (only maybe, I don’t know), the specific players in the Battle of the Nek weren’t like this, but there are many examples of military efforts falling along these lines as to make this believable. It’s also not the point. The point is Archy having gotten Barton to give Frank the job of being runner in an effort to save Frank’s life from battle, Frank having to run back and forth from the rear command station with Nicholson’s superior officer trying to deliver orders to stop the worthless charge, all while incomplete and unreliable information gets shared before wired communications get cut. The heart of the film isn’t about the war or the Gallipoli campaign, it’s about the death of innocence and childhood in the meatgrinder of WWI. And that innocence gets destroyed in a harrowing series of moments, ending with one of the great freeze frame images.

It’s so weird to think that Weir started with the odd and unsuccessful pair of Homesdale and The Cars that Ate Paris because everything since has been elegantly assembled, intelligently written, and really quite compelling (well, except for the little ditty that was The Plumber which was at least a better attempt at similar things he had been trying in his first two films). Gallipoli is something special. I question some of its history, but I still get completely into its portrait of friendship and innocence torn apart and destroyed. If the world wasn’t already taking notice of Weir and the new Australian cinema by this point (they were), this should have been the moment they realized there was real talent down under.

Rating: 4/4