Spotlight
Spotlight Date: 16-November-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Gallipoli (1981)
I have come to dislike the word "hero." Like "quality" and "family," this unfortunate noun has been overused, abused, and stripped of intrinsic value by the manipulators of PR and propaganda until it mostly conveys insincerity, unctuousness, and mockery. Every person whose story can be spun into profit becomes a hero, as if this moniker makes their judgment, suffering, or simple luck all the more important. Bah! Not only should heroism be ascribed on the rarest of occasions, but it's not necessary to generate grief or interest. If someone loses an arm or performs a service in a nonheroic way, are his actions without meaning? Of course not. All of which explains why I like the film "Gallipoli," which depicts a World War I debacle where no one performed feats of astounding bravery, but everybody merited a page in history.
In 1915, Britain and its allies attempted to take the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, the northern strip of land that borders the strait of the Dardanelles leading from the Mediterranean to the capital of Istanbul (then Constantinople). Attempts to coordinate a sea and land attack repeatedly failed, and the campaign was abandoned after less than a year --- but not before an estimated 40 to 50 thousand Allied soldiers died, among them over 10,000 members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs).
The movie relates the fictional journey of two west Australian men who come to serve with the ANZACs at Gallipoli. One, Archy (Mark Lee), is an outback golden child, a promising runner with a large and loving family who dreams of seeking adventure in the wide world as his uncle did. The other, Frank (Mel Gibson), is a junior con man with no desire to get involved in a war that sounds both dangerous and irrelevant to his own interests. The two fellows meet at a running contest and decide to strike out together, Archy in the hopes of enlisting (despite being under age), and Frank in the hopes of having a bit of a lark. After an unexpected odyssey they arrive in Perth, where Archy joins the Light Horse and Frank, succumbing to their newfound attachment and pressure from other friends, gives himself over to the infantry. By separate routes they travel to Egypt and from there, reunited, to Turkey, where each meets a different but equally memorable fate.
Peter Weir directs "Gallipoli" in the same dreamy, unhurried style he used for "Picnic at Hanging Rock," which suits both his ground-level approach to the subject and the movie's beautiful natural settings (e.g., the great pyramids). By presenting the story through the experiences of average soldiers with little claim to heroic stature, he brings the issues of war and courage down from their usually epic sphere to a more personal, and in many ways digestible, one. Although he does highlight the fatal misjudgments made by Allied commanders during the attack on the Nek (August 5-7, 1915), his principal concerns relate more to broader issues of warfare in general. What drives individual men to battle? What do they find once they get there? Do their needs ever coincide with the larger aims of their leaders, or must they always forfeit their own will in becoming part of an army? By building up an intimacy with the characters over the course of the film, Weir manages to make a statement without seeming didactic; his feelings emerge from the fact that his hero is the guy who asks "What does this war have to do with me?", who is coerced into fighting by other people's notions of right, and whose fear plays a major role in keeping him alive.
In favoring the small scale over the large, "Gallipoli" raises some historical questions that it leaves unanswered, like whether the decision to use the ANZACs for a practically suicidal mission involved any discrimination such as that which sent Massachusetts' black regiment to certain death during the Civil War (as described in the movie "Glory"). Still, it gains as much as it loses by focusing on Archy and Frank and the long road they take to Gallipoli. The film shows that typically romanticized events like wars don't require a heroic gloss to obtain distinction, but matter simply by being a part of the human experience.
Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
