War Is Hell-Mel Gibson’s “Gallipoli” (1981)- A Film Review

DVD Review

By Sandy Salmon

Gallipoli, starring Mel Gibson, Mark Lee, directed by Peter Weir, 1981

War is Hell, War is a racket, and a million other derogatory remarks sum up the reality of war and let’s add here after watching this 1981 film by Peter Weir Gallipoli those who run the wars are half crazy. Whether that was the director’s intension it nevertheless is graphically demonstrated by the actions of the chief general officers of the British Empire in World War I in the Gallipoli by most accounts the worse battle decisions of a war where the loss of life for a few feet of ground was filled with such example like the Battle of the Somme.

The beauty of this film is, beyond the great cinematography of the Australian Outback, that it delves into the motivations behind the young soldiers from Australia who wound up being slaughtered on the Gallipoli peninsula. After all although Australia was an integral of the British Empire then there was no immediate reason why those young men needed to volunteer (one father made the point that the bloody British had executed one of the soldiers’ Irish grandfather). But they did so motivated by patriotism, peer pressure or a sense of adventure.

The film focuses of two fast guys, two sprinters, Archie, played by Mark Lee, who is gung-ho to go to join and Frank Dunne, played by Mel Gibson who is less so go through their paces from trying to get into the Army (and the elite Light Horse), to training, to the gala atmosphere as the home folks sent their sons off. Not on a lark as it turned out once they joined the other Aussies in Gallipoli. Certainly not on a lark as Archie and Frank find out when wave after wave of young men are pushed out of the trenches to face the unrelenting machine-gun fire of the Turks who mowed them down almost before they got out of the trenches. Madness. Yeah, war is hell although we still haven’t learned that lesson since then.