Gallipoli

Peter Weir is perhaps the best barely known director working today, and Gallipoli is likely the finest example of it. This movie is so good that it chokes me up to think about. When I watch this film, my guts are torn from my body and twisted around cold steel pylons at the back of my brain. Somewhere back there in my American mind I relate to the people who are done wrong by the English Crown yet again, and nowhere is a generation’s story in whole so well captured in a movie. Gallipoli breaks my heart with a sort of weeping vengeance, the last word in a three generation past war, given with such utter poignancy as to disallow any rebuff.

Mel Gibson does what he still does today in this film, hitting it right on the money this time. The character he creates here is much like those in his later more recent & combed over roles in that he is a kind of silly misfit who has the talent to change the world but decides to use his energy playing fruitless games, for fun. Justifying this fun is what Gibson’s career is founded on, and I think he is a rare chimera of talent & star (like Cary Grant).

Mark Whatzhizname puts in the performance of a lifetime as Archie, and perhaps he felt the same because I’ve not seen him again. I imagine he probably stayed in Australia and maintained his local heroism of stardom there, and any such accolades would be for good reason. His intentionally naïve good-humored-to-a-fault character is the stuff of cinematic legendry. The thing about this film is that his portrayal is no more memorable than the cinematography, directing, or screenwriting, as they are all superb.

The horrific futility of war is one thing, but the intentional perpetuation of it is a whole other cruelty, one far more reprehensible. What can I say? I mean, what has Good England been more than anything in its ridiculous existence? Why, it’s been absolutely reprehensible at every turn. I don’t mean to minimize the nation’s pains (save those about the crown, which I fully mean to trivialize), the London bombings are dreadfully true history. But what’s worse about that than all of England’s exploits of misplaced rage & misused power & misaligned genes? The gutwrenchingness of Gallipoli serves to put England in her place, as grand a nation as she certainly has been, she’s also had her confident indiscretion here and there, not to mention her giant public parades of shame, and she deserves to be chastised for it.

If Gallipoli does nothing else it does that, and it does it in a very Australian way: forgivingly with generous heapings of good will. Of all the world’s movies, no nation’s complete body of work is as agreeably satisfying as Australia’s. Their movies are simply great, and Gallipoli is probably their greatest. I rank this film in my top five of all time, and I still get deep chills when I see it, especially if I’m watching it with somebody who’s never seen it before. Like Hud, I love it that much more watching it blow their minds like it continues to blow mine.

If Gallipoli is on you to see list, I recommend graduating it immediately, for I am a richer wiser sadder more joyous man for having seen it. If you’ve never heard of it before reading this review, all the better, but see this movie if it’s the last movie you ever see! I mean that, I really do. Citizen Kane, 2001, Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, From Here to Eternity, Butch Cassidy & Sundance, & Gallipoli. I rank it with that company, the movies that transcend stars (rarer a thing than you might think).

Lastly, I must simply say that this movie came out of nowhere for me, I had no idea what I was getting into. That is my favorite way of approaching a new film, and I despise movie reviews for that very reason and never read them. I do write them, however and that’s never been easier than it has been writing this one. Watching Gallipoli is easy on one hand, in that it’s a great film, and heartbreakingly difficult on the other.