Gallipoli

Saw Gallipoli, another WW1 film, this time about an obscure battle between the Turks and the Australians. I can't help but compare this film to yesterday's All Quiet on the Western Front. This one is more modern and shot in beautiful color but is much worse from my point of view. Whereas All Quiet does not focus on one particular battle, this one does. The definiteness and concreteness makes this film much more about a mismanagement of this specific battle. The truth is of course that people dying is precisely what war is designed to accomplish. The accident should not be that our team is dying when they should be killing, but that people in general are being killed full stop!

Anyway, this film was produced by Australian media-goblin Rupert Murdoch and stars Mel Gibson, so I was kind of going in with a grudge. The two central characters are Mel, a drifting laborer who enlists seemingly for lack of anything better to do, and a younger, blond son of a rancher who enlists I think wanting earnestly to fight evil. It was interesting that Mel's character often looks to this kid for guidance. The kid is stalwart and true, but relies on Mel to hunt and gather. I wonder if there were some gay subtext.

The kid is the more idealistic, brave, and cheerful of the two, inspiring a kind of hero worship. Again, war in this film is a sort of grand adventure. As the duo approaches the front line, they see Christmas lights on strings, burning bonfires, a merry scene. A mortar explodes and they grin and whoop with delight. Do they know they are going to die? Moments before the final battle scene in the film, the kid writes a letter home about how everyone on the front is excited and happy. They feel they are part of something bigger than themselves. This does not ring true to me. I believe the horseplay and boredom of the front, the casual attitude towards danger (if not towards death) but to dwell on these things is to make it seem like summer camp.

I've never even held a gun. I don't know what war is like but I doubt that it's like this, with dramatic music cues and gleeful, apple-cheeked camaraderie. I doubt it would be that way for me anyway. I think I would just be killed.