Hacksaw Ridge
Directed by Mel Gibson
Starring Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, Hugo Weaving, and Rachel Griffiths.
[rating: 2/5]
Mel Gibson’s new film Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist and the first conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honour, who wanted desperately to join the army in World War II. His religion dictates he cannot carry or use weapons and that he never labour on Saturdays. Despite yearning only to be a combat medic, the army loathed him for sticking to his beliefs. He was court-martialled, bullied, and shunned until his father, a World War I vet, intervened on his behalf so Doss could join the ranks. He was a remarkable man and demonstrated immense bravery when, left alone and defenseless on Hacksaw Ridge in Okinawa (where the bloody battle between the Japanese and the Americans took place after Pearl Harbour), he created a pulley system to lower barely alive soldiers to base camp while the Japanese prowled the area looking for signs of life to extinguish; in one of the film’s few memorable moments, he pulls a dead soldier down on top of himself to hide and barely misses being run through with a sword. Yes, it took immense courage so what a disappointment it is that Gibson’s direction, complete with religious symbolism, demonstrates anything but.
Are the overwhelming plaudits the film has received because, after more than a decade, Gibson has finally found his way back to the director’s chair? It’s hard to imagine any other reason for the reception this odd hybrid has received. Filmed in Australia with mostly local actors doing broad American accents, social media, along with the critics, is all over it, bestowing collective blessings. The first half of the film that traces the hero’s childhood, his troubled home life (his father was an abusive alcoholic), and his first and only love, is shot like a tribute to American cinema of the 1940s. Caricatures and unconvincing accents abound but for Gibson, it figures as little more than an obstacle. The extended climax of the film, the shocking massacre on Hacksaw Ridge itself, is what Gibson is grooming us for. The contrast is striking, fascinating, and downright strange.
Opening with its hero in the thick of combat, the story moves back to the Blue Mountains of Virginia where young Desmond and his brother Hal are wrestling on the front lawn. When Hal proves the victor, Desmond smacks him across the head with a brick. Did the tragic experience mar him? As played in Desmond’s adult years by Andrew Garfield, who goofily smiles like a child who’s just seen a balloon for the first time, one can only wonder. He does have an eerie way about him, particularly when he starts to romance a dewy nurse (Teresa Palmer). It’s a curious courtship (it begins with him giving blood) but despite that strange grin, she eventually swoons and becomes his cheerleader unlike his annoyed drill sergeant (a surprisingly effective Vince Vaughn) who quickly loses patience and his bitchy captain (Sam Worthington, as engaging as ever) who sneers at him dismissively. Meanwhile his fellow platoon members taunt and beat him but he perseveres, trains, and joins them on the ridge, bible in hand, where the Japanese await to pepper them with bullets, blow their legs off, and smoke them out.
Doss performs his miracle and when, back at base camp, the captain asks where all these half alive soldiers are coming from, he’s told its all courtesy of Doss and his bravery. Like a blinding bolt of humanity, and charged up by Rupert Gregson-Williams’ celestial score, the captain and the platoon suddenly realise how Very Wrong they’ve been. It’s a priceless moment, one full of inspiration and Steven Spielberg. I half expected Gibson himself to step in and congratulate him but he’s saving the best for last. Shortly after Desmond is personally bathed, the captain and his soldiers are all lined up waiting to mount the ridge for another day when a call from the captain’s superior comes through demanding to know why they haven’t returned to the trenches. With great reverence, the captain tells him they’re waiting for Doss, who’s busily praying. Ascending to the ridge, the battle continues where Doss high-kicks a grenade like Mikhail Baryshnikov.
This is a violent piece of work, balletically so. Gibson has argued, as he did forThe Passion of The Christ, that the carnage is an intricate part of the story’s tapestry. What other explanation could he offer? Consider epics like Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, two outstanding films that portray the same sensibility to infinitely greater effect. It is a fact that war is hellish, spontaneous, and disorienting but how quickly and brutally lives are taken is what makes it a nightmare. Not Gibson, who clearly has no faith in his audience. He lingers and savours every mangled limb like a bloodthirsty manipulator.
As a fellow critic and I glanced at each other in disbelief, another critic scolded us, “Just enjoy it for the story!!!” We had no choice. Gibson offered us nothing more.
