Gallipoli (1981)
Directed by Peter Weir

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.

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...