Rent Gallipoli (1981)

Cannon Fodder - Gallipoli review by Steve

This is a significant release in the Australian New Wave as it brings together its most auspicious director and its biggest star. And because it has become influential in the evolution of the Aussie national identity. Peter Weir gives us a version of the slaughter at Gallipoli in WWI which is more mythic than historical.

In 1981 maybe the film spoke to a country looking for a way to independence more than reflect the experiences of the men who lost their lives on a beach in Turkey. Mel Gibson stars as a footloose individualist/larrakin who reluctantly enlists with a naive country boy (Mark Lee) who believes in loyalty to the empire.

And after a few weeks of adventure, the mates are fed into the grinder of industrial war. They are an Aussie version of the golden generation of Edwardian youth who died senselessly in the trenches. To an outsider, this is an attractive period drama with superior production values and panoramic photography.

Gibson and Lee make an agreeable combination, but the support is unmemorable. The main weakness is the use of Jean-Michel Jarre's electronic music... Yet it still makes an impact as an anti-war film and the famous ending is devastating. The internet may inform me much of this isn't factual, but it's still bloody horrific.