You can say what you like about Mel Gibson – and most people do, with accusations of misogyny and antisemitism and footage of him behaving like a drunk and a cokehead overshadowing his once raw but now refined talent as an actor and filmmaker – but given the popular and critical success he has enjoyed with films such as Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto, you have to admit that he is one hell of a director. A fact which his Best Picture and Best Director Oscars for Braveheart and Best Film Not In The English Language BAFTA nomination for Apocalypto demonstrate.

His latest film Hacksaw Ridge, a biographical drama about the pacifist army medic Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield) who went from being called a “coward” to a decorated war hero after saving the lives of 75 wounded soldiers during the Battle of Okinawa in World War II (he was the first conscientious objector to be awarded the US Medal of Honor), is probably his most accomplished film to date. The main reason being the refreshing lack of jingoism, which has taken the shine off many a Hollywood war drama, such as Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper and Flags Of Our Fathers.

The screenplay, written by Andrew Knight (The Water Diviner) and Robert Schenkkan (The Quiet American) covers four periods of Doss’s life. His childhood under the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia where his father Tom (Hugo Weaving), a war veteran who hits the bottle just as much as he hits his wife Bertha (Rachel Griffiths), is determined that his sons Doss and Hal (Nathaniel Buzolic) don’t follow in the footsteps of his childhood friends whose guts and intestines, he tells them, were blown out from behind during World War I and whose remains are being eaten by worms under the dirt and grass of a nearby war cemetery. “It’s like we boys never existed,” he snarls before drinking from a glass half empty.

During Doss’s formative years, the roots of his pacifism are firmly planted. First, when a toy fight with his brother escalates into a near death experience for the latter. “I could have killed him,” he reflects, gazing at an embroidered depiction of The Ten Commandments with “Though shalt not kill” penetrating deep into his young psyche. And secondly, when he holds a gun to his father’s head in a desperate attempt to put an end to his wife-beating. “Why does he hate us so much?” he asks. To which his saintly mother replies, “He doesn’t hate us; he hates himself.”

The second chapter in Doss’s life is the only time when the wheels of Mel Gibson’s cart almost fall off the ridge. After coming to the aid of a young man who lay prostrate under a car (“Nice work,” a doctor tells him, “you might have saved this boy’s life.”), Doss takes a tumble himself – head over heels in love with a nurse whom he woos with a series of corny one-liners such as: “Ever since you stung me with that needle, my heart’s been beating pretty fast.” and best of all “What’s the difference between arteries and veins?” I get that Doss is inexperienced in the love department and that his clumsy advances are proof of his naivety, but the sun-drenched hue to most of these scenes together with the saccharine score which intrudes upon their courtship teeter on the brink of melodrama and are more Fifty Shades of Beige than Grey.

Thankfully, the remaining two acts take a turn for the better in terms of quality but a turn for the worse in terms of quantity of casualties. Starting off with his army training which switches from a comical introduction to his fellow cadets who include the likes of Cowboy, Ghoul and Private Private Parts (so named because he presented for inspection in the scud) to a deadly serious inquisition during which the military top brass threaten to court martial him for refusing to bear arms or work on a Saturday (in a addition to being a pacifist Doss is also a Seventh-day Adventist Christian).

“Do not look to him to save you on the battlefield,” Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn) explains to his battalion, “he will be too busy wrestling with his conscience to assist.” But wrestling with his conscience while at the same time going beyond the call of duty to not only assist but save the lives of his fellow soldiers – 75 to be precise – is exactly what he does in a horrific and terrific last hour which shows the brutality of war at its worst. Think Saving Private Ryan and then some.

Here, the cinematography of Simon Duggan (The Great Gatsby) and the editing by John Gilbert (The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring) take wing and soar like an American eagle. But not before Doss’s unit comes face-to-face with the 96 soldiers they are replacing: truckloads of the dead, nearly dead and living dead who pass them as they may their way to the ominous rock face that is Hacksaw Ridge. Take that and they’ll maybe take Okinawa, Captain Glover (Sam Worthington) tells his unit as they struggle to mask their fears behind a wall of masculinity. Take Okinawa and they’ll definitely take Japan.

As history shows, they succeeded. But what history rarely shows and what Mel Gibson successfully chronicles are the heroic efforts of men like Desmond Doss who battled with their consciences and put their lives on the line to save others. As the bombs fell and the flames burned and the bullets whizzed and the blood seeped from one limbless body to another, Doss looked to the sky and asked: “What is it you want of me?” Silence. “I don’t understand.” Silence. “I can’t hear you.” Silence. A one-way conversation similar to the one Andrew Garfield conducted as Father Sebastião Rodrigues in Scorsese’s labour of love: the aptly named Silence.

During the bloody Battle of Okinawa, Corporal Desmond Thomas Doss stuck to his principles and defended his right to do so without bearing arms. A triumph of David and Goliath proportion. And in the telling of his story a triumph too for Mel Gibson who ten years after his last directorial venture Apocalypto has shown that there is life in the old dog yet. But with six Oscar nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, will Hollywood throw him a bone?

Video courtesy of: Lionsgate Movies

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Peter Callaghan
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