Director: Mel Gibson
Writer: Robert Schenkkan(screenplay), Andrew Knight(screenplay)
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Hugo Weaving, Teresa Palmer, Rachel Griffiths, Luke Bracey, Vince Vaughn
Francois Truffaut once said in his 1973 interview with Gene Siskel that no movie can truly be anti-war. The sentiment is propounded on the basis that by portraying war in its ‘true’ sense, one fetishizes it and ends up embellishing it. Mel Gibson has been vocal about the modern blockbuster trend of relegating violence to a purposeless agency and, in turn, has been criticized vehemently for rigorously employing the same. But what sets him apart from his objects of ire, in his own mind, is treating violence in a template of grandeur.
Gibson heads back to the director’s chair nearly after a decade to essentially seek asylum in his own handcrafted masterpieces which mark his quintessential grand narrative with pain, penance and gore. ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ portrays a Seventh Day Adventist named Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), who became the first conscientious objector of war to be awarded with the Medal of Honor.
Time and again, war has been dragged to the centre of a cinematic endeavor to capture the horrors that remain elusive no matter to which extremes the filmmaker dares to venture. The movie, however, meanders onto a very controversial aspect that soared in with the modernist approaches – a view that called upon the existentialist dilemmas amidst the raging infernos and questioned humanity itself. Wilfred Owen, a prominent poet and also a conscientious objector of war, had mired in the trenches and wrestled in the constant tug of war with fickle mortality. He realized that war is not to be valorized and while his contemporaries worshipped the bloody spectacle, failing to grasp the degeneration in its actuality, he hoped that the generations to follow would see the follies of the ancestors. Much like that, Desmond Doss enlists in the U.S army to fulfil his patriotic duties, only to face beatings and imprisonment for honoring the unassailable of the Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not kill’. A tale of pacifism, in its concept, went through the churner of ‘authenticity’ in the hands of an artist who endured disembowelment in the screen of ‘Braveheart’ and went on to capture the agony of Jesus and Simon, laboring to carry the cross along the Via Dolorosa to Calvary. What came out, ironically, aestheticizes the massacres and thus finds its inception in a slow-motion rendition of the bloodshed that came to be known in the Battle of Okinawa as ‘The Taking of Hacksaw Ridge’.
In his indulging artistry, Gibson deserves to draw from his viewers a true nod towards his skills but his canny manipulations get stripped when the parallels and clichés start to cloud the storytelling. The Christian-victimization narrative propels under the veil of a character progression and thus aptly tracks back to the moment which consolidated the firm values into Desmond – his childhood. Born and raised in Virginia in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Desmond and his brother, Harold (Nathaniel Buzolic), witness firsthand the emotional scars left by war as their veteran father Tom (Hugo Weaving) drinks himself to the paradigm of irresponsibility, trying to come to terms with the loss of his brother-in-arms and thus cultivates an abusive atmosphere in home. The picturization finds itself emulating the staples of every war film in no time with stale backdrop and uninspired characterizations. It’s not until the midway through its second act that the film picks up momentum since the battlefield ‘soiree’ is preceded by a generic corny romance between the protagonist and an attractive nurse, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). Soon a montage of training session is carted out with the ever-generic loudmouth drill sergeant named Howell (Vince Vaughn), a trend since ‘Full Metal Jacket’, and the posse of recruits consisting one ladies man, one brutish yet model patriot, a butt-of-all-jokes and some others. However, the emotional tether for Desmond, although very thin, is crafted smoothly to convincingly spurt out meaningful character interactions. From the distant father’s return to the lover’s longing, every scenario builds up the stakes and the viewers are emotionally vested into the survival of a scrawny soldier who went on to save 75 lives on the battlefield, all the while carrying no gun.
Mel Gibson brought out from his lead actor a performance that can be said incoherent at best with promising outbursts of agony-laced facial expressions at times and a novice’s groping at a believable accent at others. Garfield succeeds in infusing a steely resolve into a character which in no manner is easy to mold into but fails to consolidate that fervor throughout the performance. On the other hand, Hugo Weaving delivers in his limited screen time a repulsive drunkard chewing his words out with perfection. The supporting cast, needless to say, remain pale in an attempt to highlight the protagonist and thus is left with almost nothing to offer. Teresa Palmer with her doe eyes gives a little sunshine in a fairly murky screen and Sam Worthington with his gravel-voice ends up with yet another forgettable inclusion or rather a happenstance in a cinematic offering.
Emmy nominated co-author of THE PACIFIC, Robert Schenkkan, justifies his involvement along with Gibson who, undoubtedly, paints the theatre of war with riveting gusto, unparalleled in recent memory. Never one to cower behind subtlety, Gibson surprisingly ends up as blatant and crass in delivering religious symbolisms when he etches Desmond getting hauled down the ridge reminiscing the ‘descent from the cross’ and ‘baptizes’ the savior in a post-war bath. Editor John Gilbert (The Bank Job) and cinematographer Simon Duggan puts a chilling touch to the historical nightmare where the soldiers climbed up a ridge to face hellfire and crawled down, splintered and traumatized. Composer Rupert Gregson-Williams amplifies Doss’s heroism with pulsating orchestra, which from time to time goes overboard and craves silence for the gravity to creep in.
For all the achievements and praises that can be heaped, at the end one can’t help but notice the orgasmic hint in this binarized portrayal which loudly puts forward the question – is violence really not celebrated?
My Verdict
My Ratings
2.5
Mel Gibson brought out from his lead actor a performance that can be said incoherent at best with promising outbursts of agony-laced facial expressions at times and a novice’s groping at a believable accent at others.
