Hacksaw Ridge | Little White Lies

Hack­saw Ridge

24 Jan 2017 / Released: 27 Jan 2017

Words by David Jenkins

Directed by Mel Gibson

Starring Andrew Garfield, Teresa Palmer, and Vince Vaughn

Two young people, a man and a woman, smiling and looking at each other in the front seat of a car.
Two young people, a man and a woman, smiling and looking at each other in the front seat of a car.
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Anticipation.

Is this the time we forgive and forget Mel’s various atrocities?

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Enjoyment.

Well no, but he’s back with a sizzling, heartfelt piece of misty-eyed Americana.

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In Retrospect.

A sterling modern war picture with an intriguing moral twist.

Mel Gib­son deliv­ers an intense­ly bru­tal war movie with an intrigu­ing moral twist.

It’s true, Mel Gib­son does love to make movies about men who bare an uncan­ny resem­blance to Jesus Christ. Hell, 2004’s pseu­do-snuff aria The Pas­sion of the Christ is direct­ly about our lord and sav­iour, specif­i­cal­ly how the hor­rif­ic suf­fer­ing he pur­port­ed­ly endured resem­bled an extreme French hor­ror movie from the 90s.

It tran­spires, though, that Gibson’s fer­vent reli­gios­i­ty does not mix well with alco­hol, and fol­low­ing var­i­ous ver­bal infrac­tions of the racist/​misogynist vari­ety, he was sent to the Hol­ly­wood naughty step, to put it glibly. But now, the Aussie con­tro­ver­sy mag­net we all love to hate is back with a big bushy beard and, to make mat­ters even more com­plex, he’s swag­gered through the gate with the best film of his career under his arm. Hack­saw Ridge is a work of caus­tic earnest­ness, so much so that you might have to look a lit­tle hard­er to uncov­er its teas­ing­ly sub­ver­sive core.

Andrew Garfield chan­nels a point­ed­ly emo­tion­al per­for­mance style redo­lent of sat­u­rat­ed 1950s melo­dra­ma. He plays Desmond Doss, a pep­py con­sci­en­tious objec­tor from Vir­ginia who enlists in the US army to fight the Japan­ese hoards in Oki­nawa on the pro­vi­so that he can do so with­out the aid of a rifle. His peers find him to be a ridicu­lous prat. They believe he’s a lib­er­al sub­ver­sive try­ing to make a mock­ery of the time-hon­oured rite of spilling blood for king and coun­try. Yet he is a true-blue patri­ot, and wants to express him­self by help­ing his fel­low man rather than turn­ing him into a slur­ry of gore.

Soldier in camouflage uniform crawling on muddy ground, wearing protective helmet and gear.

The title refers to a key tac­ti­cal point at the top of a pre­car­i­ous cliff face. For those who peek their tin hel­met over the lip at the top of a scram­ble net, it’s good night with a bul­let. The first half of the film deals with Doss’ attempts to secure a post in the army that caters for his spe­cial moral objec­tions, while the sec­ond is when we get to the dust-up. On a pure­ly tech­ni­cal lev­el, Gib­son excels in just lay­er­ing up ash­es of visu­al excite­ment. His take on grunt-lev­el war­fare is pum­melling and dirty. Human flesh tears, blood arcs and innards splay, and not pure­ly for the pur­pos­es of vis­cer­al kicks, but as a psy­cho­log­i­cal chal­lenge to the survivors.

It might seem that Doss’ utter­ly self­less brav­ery on the field instant­ly equates him with Christ, but that’s not the case. Hack­saw Ridge is a film that light­ly, ner­vous­ly sketch­es the line between insan­i­ty and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. Is it beyond the pale to believe that God exists as a per­son­al pro­tec­tor? And if so, does that mean that dash­ing alone onto a bat­tle field in the name of human­ist duty is the wise thing to do? The thorny sub­ject of drone war­fare has become a recent sta­ple of films about mod­ern con­flict, specif­i­cal­ly the notion of killing while keep­ing your hands clean.

Hack­saw Ridge reveals that belief as a dan­ger­ous fal­la­cy, sug­gest­ing that if you real­ly want to des­tig­ma­tise mur­der, this is the only way to do it. It’s Gibson’s strongest film because it is also his most ambigu­ous, unwill­ing to preach or draw trite com­par­isons between mod­ern era deities and the fables of the Bible. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry, told with a fire and urgency that some may con­strue as a lit­tle square. Even cin­e­mat­ic angel of death Vince Vaughn puts in a strong innings as a hard-nosed but essen­tial­ly com­pas­sion­ate drill sergeant, so this may be the gift that keeps on giving.

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