The Runners Stumble

IN THE LAST FIVE YEARS, THE cinematic treatment of war has been anything but regular. In Coming Home war was a sociological case study. Michael Cimino attempted in The Deerhunter to create a charged-up folk tale complete with Robert DeNiro as an MIG-toting ubermensch. And in Apocalypse Now Francis Ford Coppola made war something mythic; something so big and so surreal that one wondered who was playing The Ride of the Valkyries after all. But in Australian director Peter Weir's Gallipoli, there is something of a retrenchment, at least intellectually. In the movie, war does not get treated so much as it simply occurs. Instead of a homily or an exegesis, Weir delivers a story.

For the most part, it is a good story indeed. It commences in 1915 somewhere Down Under in the scenic and arid ranching country of western Australia. There, 18-year-old Archy Hamilton lives with his family and trains with his uncle to be a championship sprinter. Despite having more talent than anyone in western Australia, Archy, like anyone else who has ever been on a ranch or a farm and in a movie, bolts. Finding the opportunity to get away after his first big race in a distant town, Archy informs his uncle-mentor that he is on his way.

Unlike most rural discontents, Archy leaves not because of the allure of the city but because of his sense of duty to join his countrymen in Europe and fight the noble fight. Honor and pride are Archy's distinguishing characteristics--he proves as much early in the film by pitting himself in a race against another cowhand mounted on horseback. And though he seems to crave the adventure of war, his sense of obligation is the impelling force, one almost inconceivable to someone of the era after the battle of the Somme. Archy may be ingenuous, but he is thoroughly earnest--earnest like someone who grew up with a Kipling poem pinned on his wall--and not in the least sanctimonious. One of the tangible accomplishments of the film is actor Mark Lee's successful carrying off the role without any lapses of mawkishness.

Archy is not alone either. After the race, he and another sprinter, Frank Dunne become "mates" and head off to hop a freight train to Perth, where the underage Archy hopes to slip into the ranks of the Light Horse cavalry regiment. Dunne, as portrayed by Mel Gibson, provides a good foil for the golden-looking and piously good Archy. Sly but good natured, Dunne is an Irishman with little interest in fighting someone else's war but whom Archie finally cajoles into enlisting with remarks like "You have a greater responsibility to go...you're (big Australian twang) an athlete."

Unlike Apocalypse Now or The Deerhunter, war in Gallipoli does not resemble an all-consuming vortex. Instead, war, specifically Winston Churchill's ill-fated Gallipoli campaign into Ottoman Turkey, waits patiently at the end of the film. For Gallipoli concerns getting to the front and the adventures en route as much as the conflict on the 60-mile-long Turkish peninsula.

So the two set out on their journey, trekking first to Perth via the Australian desert. After enlistment they are shipped out to Egypt for training. Finally, they sail for the shores of Ottoman Turkey.

AS A STORY of noble, well-meaning men who enjoy a friendship and then must endure war, it is poignant and masterfully drawn. Peter Weir safely navigates the film away from both bombast and ineffectuality. The relationship of Archy and Frank is at once simple and affecting as it unfolds through the short, lyrical scenes. Both Lee and Gibson acquit themselves well in their roles and give sound, straightforward performances. Weir's direction of the background characters is better still. As random soldiers, desert wanderers and Australian ranchers, the supporting actors turn in a number of superb vignettes.

The film's strongest suit, however, is the magnificent cinematography of Russell Boyd. One after another, rich sequences of film fill the screen. Shots of furtive faces seen through the wheels of a passing train, or of a shimmering Australian desert, or of boatloads of soldiers making an amphibious assault through an eerie bluish fog make Gallipoli the kind of movie that you would not want to leave even if the sound track broke.

In fact, shredding the sound track may not be such a bad idea. Except for a handful of faltering scenes--an insipid look on a wife bidding her husband farewell when he leaves for Turkey, a near descent into bathos after the first battle scene and a few half-hearted scenes of soldiers at liberty in the market in Egypt--the sounds that accompany Boyd's overwhelming images are the film's only flaw. Even the zipping and buzzing muzak noises would not be so awful except that Weir repeatedly splices between them Albinoni's dirge-like Adagio in G minor to signify CRITICAL MOMENTS and IMPENDING FATE. The fault lies not in the adagio, which is a fine piece of music, but its repeated use as a cue is silly and melodramatic. Yet, it is by no means a fatal flaw. To ruin Gallipoli would take something more along the order of Waltzing Mathilda for 110 minutes.