By Noel Vera
MOVIE REVIEW
Hacksaw Ridge
Directed by Mel Gibson
MEL GIBSON’s latest Hacksaw Ridge tells the tale of Desmond Doss, who wanted to join the army and serve his country without firing a rifle. How’s that again?
It’s based loosely on a true story so somehow Doss did manage join and somehow the army did let him serve in his own fashion. How Doss and army manage to arrive at a workable arrangement despite all contraindications though you don’t quite get here, not in this picture.
Doss worked as a joiner at a Newport News, VA shipyard; he was offered deferment for working in a crucial industry, but felt he had to enlist and serve his country. He was a Seventh Day Adventist, however, and refused to kill, citing religious prohibitions against taking a life; he also refused to work on Sundays.
Doss wasn’t a pacifist though, and objected to being categorized a conscientious objector. He preferred to be called a “conscientious cooperator” he told the draft board. He believed in the United States’ right to use force against its enemies — he just wasn’t willing to take an enemy life himself, a point (and problem) the movie tends to glide over.
The movie also doesn’t bother to explain that Doss was hardly alone in his dilemma. There were Adventists in the Civil War and in the First World War; from the time Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to the time the United States atom-bombed Nagasaki some 12,000 Adventists participated in the Second World War — Doss was unique only because he had been decorated for his participation.
The more I read about Doss the less easy it was to square him with the simple soul Andrew Garfield plays on the big screen; the actual man was too complicated a human being to pigeonhole neatly into the category of “objector,” and constantly stuck in the military’s craw. Gibson on the other hand is apparently far less inhibited than the military, morally or aesthetically; he simply lops off any inconvenient truths and pins a metaphorical crown of thorns on Doss’ head, whipping the man forward to his personal Calvary.
Doss’ father didn’t suffer from PTSD when he threatened his wife; he was drunk and quarreling with his brother when he pulled out a gun (his wife called the police, and told Desmond to hide the weapon). Doss’ fellow soldiers never beat him up; they ostracized him, ridiculed him, insulted him but didn’t bloody him.
In fact the more I learn about Doss’ military career the less I see Passion of the Christ than Catch 22 (“conscientious cooperator”) or MASH (medic elbow-deep in gore) — less parable on sacrificial heroism and more satire about a man who goes to heroic lengths to enable other men to do the killing.
It would be more honest that way, the paradox laid out in the open for us to examine (or ignore if we so choose); it would be truer to the absurdity of military patriotism and unviolent faith intermingling, a forced copulation between oil and water (you can’t take your eye away from the mix for a minute or they’ll start avoiding each other). It would at least have been a more fertile inventive concept than the kitsch bloodbath Gibson actually gives us.
Once the men land on Okinawa, the picture turns dead serious, as in 50,000 American casualties (double that number for the Japanese). Bodies fly through the air in glorious slow motion; rats scrabble through human guts, nibbling on choicest bits. The sky fills with flame, smoke, screams; we’ve seen this before and worse in John Woo’s Bullet in the Head or Windtalker, the difference being Woo presenting his films as fiction not fact, stylized takes on a historical subject not an authentic record of the event itself. Woo never really bothers to pretend he’s making historical epics (though they’re recognizably — even triumphantly — of the period, and often have an epic feel); Gibson since Passion of the Christ through Apocalypto to this movie keeps claiming to have tapped one truth or another, the assumption being we’d listen to him once he has been thusly sanctified.
Sanctified or not I’d say Woo’s the better filmmaker — his editing rhythms are smoother, his action choreography more inventive. Even his slow motion is more graceful, with an emphasis on balletic motion over arterial spray or intestinal flop.
(Oh, and for the record — skip this paragraph if you plan to see the movie! — the real Desmond Doss recalls kicking his leg at the grenade, not necessarily being able to knock it away; it had been tossed by Japanese troops accidentally encountered past the escarpment and not, as Gibson has it, by soldiers treacherously pretending to surrender [Trust Gibson to add that extraneous detail emphasizing the evil of foreign devils]).
A grim joke, Gibson’s simpleminded war drama being nominated for Best Picture, Gibson himself Best Director.
*It’s as if Gibson had taken a page from the Japanese defense of Okinawa: when flames roar overhead, take to the tunnels and keep head low; once all is quiet, come out with both barrels blasting. Only thing needed is a resurrected Robert Altman recording all with a hi-def videocam — sequel to The Player, anyone?
MTRCB Rating: R-16
* Not that I think the picture’s in any danger of being recognized for its art; far as I’m concerned this director and the Oscars richly deserve each other, one shoved far up the other. The Oscars do indicate industry approval, however, and — barring Gibson getting drunk behind the wheel of a car again — he’s apparently been welcomed back with open forgiving (forgetful?) arms.
