Like the spirit of Dunkirk for Britain, Gallipoli is forever part of Australia's national consciousness (countering the American rewrite of the tagline `from a place you've never heard of, comes a story you'll never forget'), with even a current police special task force to tackle its `bikie' problem being named after the battle. The film is a tribute to the Australian spirit of courage and comradeship further borne out in a survey last autumn of its top 100 prominent citizens by being voted their favourite from a local director. It is a tale of the misuse or even abuse of colonial affiliations and the Anzacs with a classic landing at the wrong place at the wrong time piece of military planning. However, the British also incurred heavy losses (120,000 casualties compared to Australia's 26,111 with 8,141 killed), far from `sitting on the beach drinking cups of tea' as Peter Weir and David Williamson's script indignantly has it.
The compelling poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, together with Lewis Milestone's searing masterpiece `All Quiet on the Western Front', based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel of The Great War, had convinced me as a teenager that there was no glory in war. This view had been reinforced by TV images from Vietnam and I found myself at odds with the jingoistic mood in the UK for the 1982 skirmish with Argentina over the Falklands. At times throughout history a call to arms has been necessary to oppose despotism but the tragic loss of young life is even more abhorrent given the nature of the slaughter of World War I in the countless ill-conceived and poorly executed campaigns in a cause unknown to most of its participants. Viewing Weir's pertinent film in the mid 1980's, concerning the assault on the Dardanelles which resulted in the massacre at Gallipoli, only furthered my opinion. This perspective on life's lack of compassion was recently strengthened by the TV drama `Shackleton' which told of most of the survivors of an ill-fated south polar expedition of 1914 having barely survived the awesomeness of the planet being swiftly packed off to the front line to face man's own version of Hell.
The storyline, rather than being an in-depth study of the military campaign at Gallipoli, develops the friendship between Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee), an idealistic and romantic under aged 18-year-old, and the older and more cynical Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), involving you in their lives to give greater pathos to their fates. The two meet as competitors on the racetrack, with a `Chariots of Fire' (also released in the same year) style of rivalry and friendship and decide to join up together, which involves a trek in the spirit of Burke and Wills across a vast dry lake in Western Australia to reach Perth. In one of life's bitter ironies the sprinters try to join the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, and end up in a battle where horses have no part to play. The men are used as infantry for the charge of 7 August 1915 against the Turk position of the Nek, where 375 of 600 Australians were cut down in three waves of a criminally futile attack leaving 234 dead.
Archy's memorable training patter (`How fast can you run? As fast as a leopard') with his uncle Jack (Bill Kerr) is also his last utterance before going over the top to meet his certain destiny. The finale is cleverly calculated to leave us with the feeling of the tragedy of the Gallipoli campaign as well as the sense of loss of youth, (a similar technique used by Weir in his earlier `Picnic at Hanging Rock'). I wonder if the makers of `Blackadder Goes Forth' in 1989 were also inspired by this film as its similar freeze-frame ending would seem to serve as a tribute. It is as powerful an image, though not as viscerally assaulting on your senses, as the opening half-hour of carnage in Spielberg's version of the landing on Omaha beach in `Saving Private Ryan'.
Though criticised for the use of Jean Michel Jarre's synthesizer pop that anchors the movie-making in 1981, I find it serves as a constant reminder along with the more fitting soulful Albinoni's adagio in G minor. Similarly, Bruce Smeaton's organ strains though highly in keeping for the time, have been knocked for their inclusion in Weir's seminal `Picnic at Hanging Rock', which yet again combined the stunning photography of Russell Boyd, with the haunting mix of Mozart, Beethoven and contemporary pan pipes from Zamfir. As I doubt either ground breaking feature could be made as innocently today, using coetaneous music seems foresighted to set the period mood and mindset the films should be viewed with. It is an interesting comment on TV advertising which has done so much to popularize classical music, that recently a car advert used the same theme from Oxygene part II, and though I can't recall the make, it still conjures up the desperate image of a young Mel Gibson dashing frantically along the trenches in a doomed race to prevent the slaughter of his mates. In a parallel vein Wagner's `Ride of the Valkyries' will always remind me of the helicopter attack formation playing this at full volume as it sweeps on a Viet Cong village in Francis Ford Coppola's darkly satirical `Apocalypse Now'.
It is a shame that a few months ago, with such rare chances to see Australia's finest movies in the UK, `Gallipoli' was only screened on the minority access Channel 5, precluding many potential viewers. This film furthered Weir's path of greatness along which he has proven his creative flexibility not only in Australia as one of its most talented directors, but also in Hollywood with the successes of his engrossing `Witness', the inspiring `Dead Poet's Society' and his surreally brilliant latest `The Truman Show'. In November of last year in recognition of his contribution, Australia's film and television directors nominated Weir as winner of their first lifetime achievement award.
The compelling poetry of Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, together with Lewis Milestone's searing masterpiece `All Quiet on the Western Front', based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel of The Great War, had convinced me as a teenager that there was no glory in war. This view had been reinforced by TV images from Vietnam and I found myself at odds with the jingoistic mood in the UK for the 1982 skirmish with Argentina over the Falklands. At times throughout history a call to arms has been necessary to oppose despotism but the tragic loss of young life is even more abhorrent given the nature of the slaughter of World War I in the countless ill-conceived and poorly executed campaigns in a cause unknown to most of its participants. Viewing Weir's pertinent film in the mid 1980's, concerning the assault on the Dardanelles which resulted in the massacre at Gallipoli, only furthered my opinion. This perspective on life's lack of compassion was recently strengthened by the TV drama `Shackleton' which told of most of the survivors of an ill-fated south polar expedition of 1914 having barely survived the awesomeness of the planet being swiftly packed off to the front line to face man's own version of Hell.
The storyline, rather than being an in-depth study of the military campaign at Gallipoli, develops the friendship between Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee), an idealistic and romantic under aged 18-year-old, and the older and more cynical Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), involving you in their lives to give greater pathos to their fates. The two meet as competitors on the racetrack, with a `Chariots of Fire' (also released in the same year) style of rivalry and friendship and decide to join up together, which involves a trek in the spirit of Burke and Wills across a vast dry lake in Western Australia to reach Perth. In one of life's bitter ironies the sprinters try to join the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, and end up in a battle where horses have no part to play. The men are used as infantry for the charge of 7 August 1915 against the Turk position of the Nek, where 375 of 600 Australians were cut down in three waves of a criminally futile attack leaving 234 dead.
Archy's memorable training patter (`How fast can you run? As fast as a leopard') with his uncle Jack (Bill Kerr) is also his last utterance before going over the top to meet his certain destiny. The finale is cleverly calculated to leave us with the feeling of the tragedy of the Gallipoli campaign as well as the sense of loss of youth, (a similar technique used by Weir in his earlier `Picnic at Hanging Rock'). I wonder if the makers of `Blackadder Goes Forth' in 1989 were also inspired by this film as its similar freeze-frame ending would seem to serve as a tribute. It is as powerful an image, though not as viscerally assaulting on your senses, as the opening half-hour of carnage in Spielberg's version of the landing on Omaha beach in `Saving Private Ryan'.
Though criticised for the use of Jean Michel Jarre's synthesizer pop that anchors the movie-making in 1981, I find it serves as a constant reminder along with the more fitting soulful Albinoni's adagio in G minor. Similarly, Bruce Smeaton's organ strains though highly in keeping for the time, have been knocked for their inclusion in Weir's seminal `Picnic at Hanging Rock', which yet again combined the stunning photography of Russell Boyd, with the haunting mix of Mozart, Beethoven and contemporary pan pipes from Zamfir. As I doubt either ground breaking feature could be made as innocently today, using coetaneous music seems foresighted to set the period mood and mindset the films should be viewed with. It is an interesting comment on TV advertising which has done so much to popularize classical music, that recently a car advert used the same theme from Oxygene part II, and though I can't recall the make, it still conjures up the desperate image of a young Mel Gibson dashing frantically along the trenches in a doomed race to prevent the slaughter of his mates. In a parallel vein Wagner's `Ride of the Valkyries' will always remind me of the helicopter attack formation playing this at full volume as it sweeps on a Viet Cong village in Francis Ford Coppola's darkly satirical `Apocalypse Now'.
It is a shame that a few months ago, with such rare chances to see Australia's finest movies in the UK, `Gallipoli' was only screened on the minority access Channel 5, precluding many potential viewers. This film furthered Weir's path of greatness along which he has proven his creative flexibility not only in Australia as one of its most talented directors, but also in Hollywood with the successes of his engrossing `Witness', the inspiring `Dead Poet's Society' and his surreally brilliant latest `The Truman Show'. In November of last year in recognition of his contribution, Australia's film and television directors nominated Weir as winner of their first lifetime achievement award.