Hacksaw Ridge
Director: Mel Gibson
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey
Duration: 139 mins
Class:12
KRS Releasing Ltd
Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), a most unlikely war hero. Soft-spoken, mild-mannered and highly religious by nature; physically skinny and a vegetarian to boot, he is hardly the poster boy for a career in the military.
Yet this is 1945, the tail end of World War II, the time when the war in the Pacific raged incessantly, and US forces in Okinawa, Japan, were facing some of their most difficult moments.
Doss, a young man living the quiet life in Virginia, felt he couldn’t stand by and do nothing; so against the wishes of his father Tom (Hugo Weaving) he enlists – this despite the fact he was a self-proclaimed conscientious ‘co-operator’ who refused to carry a weapon and vowed to never kill.
Doss’s superiors in the army do not quite know what to do with him, and his comrades treat him rather badly. Yet his persistence finally landed him the position he wanted as an unarmed medic in the infantry. And, when he is called into battle, this unassuming young man goes on to single-handedly save the lives of dozens of his comrades without ever firing a single bullet or causing harm any to the enemy.
It has become a cliché to describe someone as “an ordinary person who did extraordinary things”, but Doss is the epitome of that, and his story works on many levels. Mel Gibson, sitting once again in the director’s chair, is no slacker when it comes to big, bold films drawn on a great canvas with strong characterisation at their heart, and this is no different.
Hacksaw Ridge, with a screenplay by Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight, is at once a war film and family drama but it is ultimately a character study; the story of the unwavering faith and impenetrable courage of its unlikely hero, brought to life in a charming and charismatic performance by Garfield.
In Garfield’s hands, however, Doss’s innocence is never mawkish
The actor is clearly on a roll right now, what with this and his powerful role as the persecuted Jesuit priest in Silence, also currently in cinemas. There are many parallels to be drawn between the two roles – not least, of course, the faith that drives them – but Garfield is now an actor experienced enough to make clear distinctions; and in Doss he has created an awkward, shy, innocent and moral man brought up in a strict household headed by his angry, unforgiving father (Weaving, accurately capturing the essence of a man broken by the horrors he himself witnessed during World War I); timid mother (Rachel Griffiths, affecting) and brother – the catalyst of the incident that instilled in Desmond the pledge never to harm a human being.
In Garfield’s hands, however, Doss’s innocence is never mawkish; only genuine, warm and truly inspiring. This is a man who is also funny, charming, amiable and delightfully romantic – before we get to the horrors of war we thankfully get to witness his wooing of Dorothy Schutte (a radiant Teresa Palmer), the nurse he makes up his mind to marry within minutes of meeting her.
Yet the idyllic life he plans to have with his newfound love are cut short when he is finally sent into the war, and the authentic battle scenes show Gibson flexing his considerable creative muscles.
These scenes are not for the faint-hearted, as the director takes Doss and his unit (led by the very tough-talking Sergeant Howell played by Vince Vaughn, and Captain Glover played by Sam Worthington) straight onto the battlefield in an up close and personal look at the carnage wrought in the theatre of war, with blood, limbs and various skeletal body parts littering the ground.
The battle scenes provide a formidable contrast to the film’s quiet, soft-spoken pacifist. Gibson pulls no punches from the moments Doss and his unit face Hacksaw Ridge, the 400-foot-high steep cliff they need to climb, knowing that at the top Japanese soldiers lay in wait for them armed to the teeth, to the final, deathly moments of battle when Doss carries out his rather extraordinary heroic deeds.
The director refuses to shy away from the relentless bloodletting and merciless brutality. However, there comes a time when you feel he ought to have said ‘enough’, because it begins to feel a little self-indulgent, almost as though he is revelling in it.
That said, if at moments Gibson comes close to alienating the audience, along comes Doss to remind you that sometimes a good man can emerge from all this evil.