The Sunday Screening Session….. Gallipoli (1981)

28 Sunday Apr 2013

Tags

Adventure, Adventure Drama, Anti-War Film, Australia, Australian Film, Bill Hunter, Bill Kerr, Buddy Film, David Argue, David Williamson, Drama, Film, film review, Food For Thought, For Love Of Country, Graham Dow, Harold Hopkins, History, History Fiction, Home Grown, iRate:: 4½ / 5, Mark Lee, Mel Gibson, Middle East, Period Film, Peter Weir, Robert Grubb, Russell Boyd, Slice Of History, Sunday Screening Session, Tim McKenzie, War, War Drama, William Anderson, World War I

Credits (Click to expand)

Trailer:

iReview:
Last Thursday, 25 April, was Anzac Day, the day Australians and New Zealanders acknowledge the sacrifice of all those who have served in war and peacekeeping. It also commemorates the men and women who have died in that service.

Anzac Day coincides with the landing of ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps), French, British and other British Empire troops at Gallipoli in south west Turkey in 1915. The objective was to secure the Dardanelles to provide a sea route to reach the Russian allies and ultimately to take Constantinople (Istanbul) and knock Germany’s ally, Turkey, out of the war.

The eight month campaign that followed cost the lives of 53,000 allied (including almost 12,000 Anzacs) and 56,000 Turks with total casualties reaching almost half a million. Many thousands more, suffered from dysentary, a result of the appalling sanitary conditions encountered by the troops.

Despite the campaign’s ultimate failure, media reports reaching Australia extolled the heroism of the Anzac troops and stirred national pride in the young country which had federated as Australia only 14 years earlier. Albany, the south coast port city in my home state of Western Australia, was the embarkation point for the thousands of troops who left Australia for Gallipoli. Albany also has a special significance for my family as it was my children’s maternal grandmother who, 15 years ago, uncovered the evidence that confirmed Albany as the location for the nation’s first iconic Anzac Day “Dawn Service”.

Learn more:
• Albany and the Anzacs
• Albany historian reflects on nations first Anzac dawn service
Listen to their discussion:
• Albany historian reflects on nations first Anzac dawn service

The way Australians relate to Anzac Day has evolved over the years and has not always been as robustly and reverentially marked as it is today. I remember Anzac Day in the 1970s, as a holiday celebrated largely as a day off from work and school, with a sideshow parade of old soldiers who got together once a year to swap tales of war, gamble a little and imbibe a little too much. The Gallipoli Campaign that sporned the day of remembrance as well as the world wars that were commemorated, were remote, little known and of scant significance to many. At that time, many Australians were also disaffected with all things military as a result of the country’s involvement in the disastrous Vietnam War.

In 1981, that all changed with the release of Peter Weir’s Gallipoli. The New Wave renaissance of the Australian film industry had seen acclaimed films like Wake in Fright (1971), The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Sunday Too Far Away (1975), The Last Wave (1977), Mad Max (1979), My Brilliant Career (1979), and Breaker Morant (1980), whet the Australian appetite for home grown cinema. The New Wave reached its zenith with Gallipoli (1981) which was a phenomenon in Australia with huge box office and critical success. The film also sparked a resurgent interest in the Anzac tradition which has grown steadily since. In 2013, a record 40,000 people attended the Dawn Service at the War Memorial in Perth, Western Australia’s state capital. Thousands more attended services in other cities and towns all over Australia, including Albany.

To acknowledge the significance of the day, I thought I’d revisit this best loved of Australia’s War cinema: Gallipoli.

What Happens:
Eighteen year-old Western Australian champion sprinter Archy Hamilton (Mark Lee) could be an Olympic contender, but he disappoints his trainer Jack (Bill Kerr) when he instead enlists in the elite Australian Light Horse cavalry. He’s accompanied by talented sprinter Frank Dunne (Mel Gibson), who also attempts to join but can’t ride a horse and is relegated to the infantry with his other friends.

Training in Cairo, the Anzac cavalrymen are converted to infantry so Archy persuades his Major, Barton (Bill Hunter) to allow Frank to transfer to the regiment.

At Gallipoli in 1915, the Anzacs find that they’re being used as cannon fodder as a ‘diversion’ for British landings elsewhere, and the entire unit realizes that they must obey suicidal orders and charge Turkish machine guns, a lunatic event among a litany of incompetent military planning.

Story (Click to expand)

Since I last saw this movie many years ago, I’d forgotten that it starts out as a boy’s own adventure featuring a very young, very Australian and not so weird Mel Gibson. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s interesting to reflect on this nascent star and his subsequent and controversial career. It’s also interesting to reflect on the very different career trajectories of the two stars. Gibson, we know went on a stellar rise to the A-list in Hollywood while Mark Lee (Archy Hamilton) moved into relative obscurity.

The outback scenes that open the film are spectacularly shot with the heat, dust and desolation radiating off the screen. The stark monochromatic beauty of Australia’s hot, dry interior is a place best admired from the air-conditioned comfort of a 4 wheel drive. That many Australians willingly endured life in these and other hostile environs was the steel that forged the myth of the tough Anzac warrior. Williamson’s script is cloaked in this mythology and he uses it well to set up the main protagonists in this yarn.

Archy is a naive young man and a very talented runner who yearns for the adventure of Gallipoli that he has read and heard about. His sprinting rival, Frank (Mel Gibson) is a cynical descendant of Irish nationalists, and as such, has no desire to fight Britain’s war. At the time, Irish nationalists and unionists were in a bitter struggle over the future independence of Ireland from Britain. The speed with which Frank and Archy are transformed from rivals to such good friends that Frank is prepared to enlist with him, almost stretches my credulity and that’s despite the device of the desert trek bonding ordeal they endure that cements their close mateship. If Weir had taken more time to develop these characters, perhaps this wouldn’t have seemed such a stretch.

Learn more:
• Ireland and World War I

Generally, the performances of the cast, particularly, Mel Gibson are strong. Newcomer, Mark Lee also convinced, despite apparently having a particularly nervous time on set.

David Williamson’s script also moves the story well and although calculated to draw strong emotion, it doesn’t overindulge in overt tearjerking.

Although half the movie is set in Western Australia, none of it was filmed there. Lake Torrens in South Australia represented the desert in WA and Adelaide Railway Station stood in for Perth. The Marble Hall at the station also provided the set for the Cairo ball, before the troops shipped out to Gallipoli. Various beaches in South Australia, including Gallipoli Beach, were also used to depict the Gallipoli theater. On the other hand, the Cairo pyramid footage was actually shot on location and provides an interesting, and sometimes amusing, leg of the boy’s own adventure. The behaviour of the Aussies in Egypt as they mocked their British counterparts, also provided a neat metaphor for the rebellious teenager relationship, Australia shared with the mother country.

One of the film’s most memorable scenes was the eerily quiet and beautiful night arrival at Gallipoli; the looming terror juxtaposed with the brightly festooned and other worldly hospital ship offshore. And although for a time it looked like the boys were approaching a fun day at the seaside, the blood in the water, as they abandoned their cares and clothes and went swimming, reminded us of the deadly import of their endeavour.

The final scenes in the trenches were laden with the dread of what was coming, interspersed with the evocative strains of Giazotto’s Adagio in G minor. Major Barton’s attempt to shut out the war raging around him, listening to the duet from Bizet’s famed The Pearl Fishers opera, also provided a poignant moment in the buildup to the horrible climax.

On the morning of 7 August 1915, the Australian 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments were to attack Turkish lines a mere 30 metres from their own. The attack in 4 waves, was to be immediately preceded by an artillery suppression barrage that fatefully ended 7 minutes early as a result of unsynchronised watches. The troops had already been instructed to remove ammunition from their rifles and fix bayonets. So hopeless was their position after the Turks were alerted by the barrage, that many went over the top without even their rifle. I’ll never forget the image of a bayonet being thrust into the wall of the trench to act as a hanger for a doomed soldier’s precious wedding ring. Knowing the terror that those boys must have felt as wave after wave went over the top to a certain death, enraged me today even as it did 32 years ago.

The futile attempts to get the 4 insanely suicidal charges of this Battle of the Nek called off, provided the closing argument in Weir’s prosecution case that: the Gallipoli Campaign was a cruel waste of talented young lives sacrificed by stupid and incompetent leaders. On a larger scale, it also symbolised the generation lost to the insanity that was World War I.

The final freeze-frame which evokes Robert Capa’s famous 1936 Spanish Civil War photograph The Falling Soldier, had me uncomfortably riveted to my seat with tears streaming, the first time round. Seeing it again, all these years later had exactly the same impact.

The Picture:
This is a film crying out for a Blu-ray release. The grainy, artifact laden sky in the early outback scenes, reminded me how disappointing the old DVD format picture can be. Russell Boyd’s wonderful cinematography, particularly in the early scenes, needs to be showcased in high definition.

The Audio:
I would have liked a DTS 5.1 audio track but the Dolby Digital 5.1 track was reasonably serviceable. However, the mix was heavily biased towards a simple front stereo with little distribution to surround or subwoofer channels. Frankly there was little difference between the quality of the output from my receiver and the sound generated by the surround speakers on the Panasonic 140cm flat screen monitor.

Verdict:
When I first saw this movie in 1981 it was very much a creature of its time, coming so soon after Breaker Morant and the widening scrutiny of Australia’s past as well as its relationship with Britain and the British Empire. So, with its huge success, this was also a triumph of its time. I’m pleased to say, it is still a wonderful and deeply affecting landmark in Australian Cinema.

iRate:: 4½ out of 5.

4Movie Tragics

Extras:
Disk One:
• Cast and Crew Bios and Filmography (interactive bio. & filmography text screens).
• Theatrical Trailer.

Disk Two:
• Interview with Peter Weir (interesting retrospective interview) – 15min.
• Interview with Mel Gibson (reflective interview filmed in 2005) – 12min.
• Boys Of The Dardanelles: Australian War Memorial Documentary (produced by the War Memorial to commemorate the men who fought and died at Gallipoli) – 22min.
• The Keith Murdoch Letter: The Letter That Changed History (a facsimile of the letter Murdoch wrote to his friend, Australian prime minister Andrew Fisher, which led to the removal of the Campaign commander, General Sir Ian Hamilton and the eventual withdrawal from Gallipoli. Note: Sir Keith was the father of Gallipoli producer and media mogul, Rupert Murdoch).
• Photo Gallery (30 production stills) – 2min.
• In Depth Gallipoli Material (library of interesting information stills).
• DVD-Rom Teaching Aids including a printable version of The Keith Murdoch Letter: The Letter That Changed History.

You want More!
Gallipoli – IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
Gallipoli – Rotten Tomatoes
Gallipoli – allmovie.com
Gallipoli – Wikipedia

Is this one of the best anti-war movies yet produced or am I just biased?
:: Please leave a comment ::

The Sunday Screening Session….. Platoon (1986)

24 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Zak de Courcy in Film

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

1867-68, Action, Anti-War Film, Blood and Gore, Charlie Sheen, Cold War Film, Combat Film, Drama, Ensemble Film, Film, film review, Food For Thought, Forest Whitaker, Francesco Quinn, iRate:: 4½ / 5, John C. McGinley, Johnny Depp, Jungle Film, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, Modern Classic, Oliver Stone, Platoon, Richard Edson, Southeast Asia, Sunday Screening Session, Tom Berenger, Tough Guys, Vietnam, Vietnam War Era, War, War Drama, Willem Dafoe

Mood?:: Blood and Gore |
Food For Thought | Tough Guys.
iRate:: 4½ / 5
Director:: Oliver Stone.
Writer:: Oliver Stone (screenplay).

Cast:: Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Forest Whitaker, Francesco Quinn, John C. McGinley, Richard Edson, Kevin Dillon, Reggie Johnson, Keith David, Johnny Depp, David Neidorf.

Credits (Click to expand)

Trailer (HD):

iReview:
I was scratching around my library trying to settle on a film for this week’s screening but found myself spoiled for choice. I asked a few friends for help and suggested they consider titles from science fiction, gangster or graphic novel adaptation. So after extensive consultation within the strict parameters provided, I’m Screening Platoon in this Sunday Session. Umm, yes I know, it’s a war movie. I hadn’t seen this film for more than 10 years and that was the less than stellar, 2000 DVD release, which I viewed on an old 80cm 4:3 TV. So I was looking forward to the opportunity to see the recent 25th Anniversary Blu-ray release, on a 140cm 1080p widescreen.

Throughout the soundtrack, Samuel Barber’s hauntingly beautiful Adagio for Strings, interjects to add a note of melancholy. It’s unfortunate, that after Platoon, overuse has turned such a wonderful feature of this film into a cliche. Nevertheless, I’d still recommend listening to the track while reading this as it sets a darkly appropriate tone.

After a very brief introduction and without fanfare or warning, the audience descends into an impenetrable jungle. The camera at eye level draws us into a patrol alongside the newest member of Bravo Company, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), who is confronted by the claustrophobic thick lush brush, with rough fronds brushing and irritating his fresh face. We experience the gut-wrenching physical exertion of the terrain as he hacks frustrated and incompetently with his machete, dry reaches and is harassed by ants, leaches, and mud. And we sense the contagious and overwhelming fatigue.

“Somebody once wrote: ‘Hell is the impossibility of reason.’ That’s what this place feels like: Hell.” So says the bewildered Taylor as he writes a letter to his grandma.

Most of us could identify with Taylor’s disillusionment. He’s a kid from a good family who dropped out of college because he felt the call to do his patriotic duty and “Live up to what Grandpa did in the first war, and Dad did in the second.”. And, as he put it, “…why should just the poor kids go off to war.” He soon realizes that in ‘Nam the drafted men are largely uneducated, “They’re poor. They’re unwanted… They’re the bottom of the barrel, and they know it.”.

Through Taylor, Oliver Stone stipulates that war has always been fought by the poor and “rich kids always get away with it.”. He’s right of course, You need look no further than the last president and vice-president of the USA, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. It’s reported that Bush went AWOL (absent without leave) from the National Guard from 1972-’73, while Cheney applied for and received five Vietnam War draft deferments. When asked about his deferments, he reportedly said, “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service”.

Story (Click to expand)

Platoon is set in a remote area of Vietnam’s east, near the Cambodian border, during 1967-’68. The men of Bravo Company live in barely tolerable conditions, rarely sleep and frequently go out on nerve-jangling ‘ambush’ patrols where they lie in wait for an ethereal enemy, who only seems to emerge from the mist as an apparition. We, like the rest of the patrol, intently watch the dense, steaming wet brush, looking for any movement. Like them, we have no idea if they will appear but sense the danger. Alongside the patrol, we also learn that veteran leaders, Sgt. Elias Grodin (Willem Dafoe) and Sgt. Bob Barnes (Tom Berenger), can spot the seemingly invisible source of much of the danger and uncertainty, the tunnels below them that the VC (Viet Cong) disappear into. Their sense of siege is heightened by the suspicion that the enemy are also the civilians, young and old in local villages. This paranoia and contempt for the Vietnamese results in the most shocking and viscerally disturbing scenes in the film.

In Stone’s vision of the Vietnam War, there are no heroics, just a very real sense that at any time, one of us could be thrown into that hell and how might we react; perhaps just like one of them.

Some of Oliver Stone’s other films, like Salvador, JFK and Natural Born Killers, almost blow the horn before coming down the street, so transparent is their intent; not so Platoon. Here, the plot doesn’t meander and yet, it is brilliantly disorienting, creating a palpable unease. Nor does it telegraph its trajectory and because the whole story is told from the point of view of the camera lens as a member of the squad, there’s no predictability or safe foxhole for us to rest and little indication what we might expect through the next bush.

While the wisps of the enemy provide the danger and uncertainty that keeps us riveted from the first frame, the narrative arc is provided by the tension within the squad. Sgt. Barnes, a scarred battle veteran sees every Vietnamese as the enemy and fosters an attitude among his acolytes that manifests in depraved violence. At the other pole, Sgt. Elias, who acts as mentor to Taylor, blunts his cynicism by shotgunning smoke in the old-fashioned way with his ‘hippy’ friends. He also acts to mitigate the excesses of Barnes. These two characters could easily have been caricatured but in Stone’s writing they are utterly convincing.

The screenplay has been wonderfully crafted and has the polish that often characterises a song-writer’s first album that’s been percolating for years. And knowing that Stone had been working this script for 18 years, seems to confirm that. Watching the result seems like witnessing Stone’s own catharsis, reliving his own experience in Vietnam.

The performances of all the ensemble are authentic and enhanced by the realism constructed in the locations and uniforms that show the effects of constant wear, as well as copious mud and grime that attaches to bodies that are seldom washed.

Before filming began in the Philippines, the cast was sent on a two-week boot-camp. The actors were given military haircuts, required to stay in character, required to dig foxholes, ate only military rations, not allowed to shower, camped in the jungle, had rotations for night watch, and were subjected to forced marches and nighttime “ambushes” with special-effects explosions. Stone explained that he was trying to break them down, “to mess with their heads so we could get that dog-tired, don’t give a damn attitude, the anger, the irritation… the casual approach to death”. In a Bombsite interview, Willem Dafoe said,
“the training was very important to the making of the film… It wasn’t boot camp with lots of push-ups. It was serious, getting no sleep; doing activities at night where you were attacked by real people. Certainly you weren’t going to die, but you did know exhaustion and confusion… the training was important because it gave us a relationship to soldiering… By the time you got through the training and through the film, you had a relationship to the weapon. It wasn’t going to kill people, but you felt comfortable with it.”

This preparation obviously paid off in the delivery of the cast. If anyone were to ask me how an actor is directed, I’d point to one of the worst I can remember as a contrast: George Lucas’ Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. There, fine actors, like Ewan McGregor, appear to be delivering lines with the care of a first Script Read-Through. in a Daily Express interview, McGregor even said,
“Quite honestly, after my initial excitement, the film-making process turned out to be the epitome of tedium,” he said. “There was no spontaneity. Your job, as an actor, was just to get it out. I was frowning a lot. It just became a frowning exercise.”
Now come back to Platoon, and while it’s not the finest bit of actor performance direction, it’s still very good. The acting of this ensemble is delivered with assurity and an easy familiarity. The performances are also understated even though the actions portrayed might be shocking and seem almost implausible at times. This restraint adds to the believability and menace of the scenario with very ordinary people doing inexplicable things.

One of the Vietnam War movies that’s frequently held up in comparison with Platoon, is Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppola which was released seven years earlier. Where Apocalypse Now is epic in its bombast and artifice, Platoon is intimate but a lot more confronting. Where Coppola orchestrated a well crafted Wagnerian opera, Stone has unselfconsciously delivered a frank and unmannered masterpiece.

Francois Truffaut is often quoted as saying, “There is no such thing as an anti-war film”, reasoning that in a good war film, explosions and great cinematography always excite, and there’s always some sense of adventure. Well, I think Platoon goes a long way towards refuting Truffaut; this is a great anti-war film.

iRate:: 4½ out of 5.

4Movie Tragics

Extras:
• Feature Commentary by Director Oliver Stone (This filmmaker enjoys talking and this informative track relates just how personal this film was to him).
• Feature Commentary by Military Advisor Dale Dye (In this interesting track Dye details his training regimen for the cast and how he and the director worked to achieve authenticity. He also relates his own wartime experience).
• Deleted & Extended Scenes (12 scenes) – 12 minutes.
• On the Flashback to Platoon Menu, you’ll find 3 featurettes:
• • Snapshot in Time:1967-1968 (this featurette includes movie clips and interviews with Stone, Dye and others and recalls the Cold War political climate at that time) – 19 minutes.
• • Creating the ‘Nam (this production featurette looks at the design, effects and locations) – 12 minutes.
• • Raw Wounds: The Legacy of ‘Platoon’ (this piece looks at the healing process after the war and how American veterans reacted to the film) – 17 minutes.
• One War, Many Stories (veterans react to a screening of the film and relate how their own experiences compared with that depicted) – 26 minutes.
• Preparing for ‘Nam (war veterans recall their enlistment and basic training) – 7 minutes.
• On the Vignettes Menu there are 3 short elements:
• • Caputo & the 7th Fleet (recollections of the 1975 evacuation of Saigon) – 2mins.
• • Dye Training Method (the technical advisor, Dale Dye discusses his process for turning actors into soldiers) – 3mins.
• • Gordon Gekko (recalls how the name was hatched during a Platoon brainstorming session) – 1min.
• The DVD copy (this is the disappointing dvd version released in 2000 and a questionable addition to this set)

You want More!
Platoon – IMDb (Internet Movie Database)
Platoon – Rotten Tomatoes
Platoon – allmovie.com
Platoon – Wikipedia

In my mind, this film ranks right up with All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) as one of the two or three best anti-war films yet produced. What do you think about the film?

:: Please leave a comment ::

Zak From Downunder

~ Zak de Courcy's sometimes incendiary thoughts about politics, life and religion.

Tag Archives: War Drama

The Sunday Screening Session….. Gallipoli (1981)

The Sunday Screening Session….. Platoon (1986)