Hacksaw Ridge

Hell (As It Is On Earth)
or
Yea, Even Though I Walk Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I Will Fear No Evil, For You Are With Me.

Psalm 23:4

You may love Mel Gibson. You may hate Mel Gibson. But, what cannot be denied is that the man knows how to make movies. He also has the temerity...and the just plain guts...to make them on his own dime. Such risk-taking inspires careful consideration of subject-matter before committing to making it. And, say this for Mel Gibson, he will rarely play it safe when he is behind the camera, frequently taking on subject matter that most studios would rather not touch (especially now that he is box-office persona non grata).

Hacksaw Ridge (although he did not finance it, but took it as a job) is a case in point. 

Based on the true story of Army Medic Desmond T. Doss (played in the film by Andrew Garfield)—the most decorated conscientious objector during World War II—it plays like a modern, more brutal—much more brutal—version of Sergeant York, with the exception that Doss' feats of bravery do not need Hollywood glorification or invention; they are already too unbelievable to be true (and, in fact, had to be toned down a bit because, as was said "no one would believe it"). But, they are a matter of record, detailed by men who, until his days of reckoning, had no use for the man whatsoever.

Doss grew up in Virginia, the son of a WWI vet and carpenter, in a devout Seventh Day Adventist household. An incident when he was a boy—nearly clobbering his brother with a brick—and the "Thou Shalt Not Kill" portion of the Ten Commandments, very early on cemented his religious convictions, vowing to never take a life—any life—and became a practitioner of non-violence and strict vegetarianism. He attended an Adventist school until eighth grade and then left to work to help his family during the Depression. In 1942, he was working at a Virginia shipyard and could have gotten a deferment, but joined the military and, because of his religious beliefs, filed as a conscientious objector, vowing to never pick up a gun and refusing to take a human life. His plan was to be a medic in the service.

All well and good. But first, he had to survive basic training. His superiors (played by Vince Vaughn—he's great in this—and Sam Worthington) are suspicious of his motives; Doss won't even hold a gun, much less fire one, and doesn't do any work on Saturday's by Adventist edict. And those suspicions and attempts to break him down filter down to his fellow recruits, who don't like the extra attention his actions bring on the squad from their superiors, and who look on Doss with suspicion—how can they trust him in the field if he won't carry a gun or watch their back?

In the film, Doss is not allowed off-base to attend his own wedding (which is movie fabrication as Doss was already married before he joined). Nor did he face actual court-martial proceedings for his on-compliance—although he was threatened with it, but, as disciplinary measures, he was prevented from consideration of leave to see his family. Intervention by his veteran father (played by Hugo Weaving)—although not by the means depicted in the film—prevented him from being punished by denial of leaves. Doss still faced suspicion—and sometimes retribution—for his stance. It was a dynamic that lasted until his troop was put into active combat.

The film excludes Doss' service as a medic while in Leyte and Guam and cuts right to the chase of his service on Okinawa. Doss' unit was tasked with storming the Maeda Escarpment—dubbed "Hacksaw Ridge"—the high ground on the island, atop a 350 foot cliff, where Japanese troops had been dug in for years, tunneled in and waiting for attack. 

First, the troop had to scale the sheer cliff and then, go to battle. The initial attack was a rout. Outnumbered and out-matched, Doss' troop was forced to fall back and go back over the cliff. But, Doss remained, tending to the wounded, and single-handedly lowering each man back to the ground, while also dodging machine gun fire.

For all the fabrications of the disciplining of Doss in basic training, the events on the hill are accurate as far as Doss' actions. He really did save between 50 and 100 men (His Medal of Honor compromised at 75, but even Doss' low-balling of 50 is an incredible accomplishment) on the hill by himself, alone on the ridge, finding and treating the wounded, hauling them under fire to the cliff's edge and lowering each wounded man by rope. Miraculously, he suffered shrapnel injuries that did not prevent him from tending the injured. And he kept going, man by man. And only until he had exhausted survivors, did he come down himself.

Gibson has always been over-the-top when it comes to violence, whether as an actor or director. And his battle scenes have a nasty visceral energy that seems to want to rub the audience's collective nose in the gore and brutality. It gets your respect inn its depiction of a savage hell-scape that would make any one want to run back and jump over that cliff. And Doss' bravery—unarmed—through the carnage and constant danger is only enhanced by Gibson's depiction of constant gunfire and fiery death.

But, he can push it to levels that approach the cartoonish. At one point, one of the soldiers finds the body of one of his comrades cut in half in the battle. He hefts the torso and uses it as a shield while firing a machine gun one-handed. This might be possible, if a soldier fueled by adrenaline, could lift the half-a-body and run with it while not having any recoil from the machine gun. But, given the evidence of the effect the bullets have on a body throughout the sequence, one would conclude such a grisly practice would not provide much shielding.

If this image upsets you, this is not the movie for you

Case in point: in another moment, an advancing soldier takes a defensive position behind another soldier's fallen body on the ground. As he gets ready to take aim, the supposedly dead soldier sits bolt upright in front of him, screaming directly into the camera. He's immediately shot in the back of the head, his blood and brains splattering the the shocked first soldier in the reverse-angle. Then (because that wouldn't be enough, evidently, to show the brutality of war) both soldiers are cut apart by a following hail of gunfire. Horrific, it certainly is, but it's also entirely gratuitous, just piling on the carnage to further the point that war is a place that can get you killed. A lot. As if that wasn't known. It's a tendency that Gibson has, and a failing that he has to overstate the point, no matter how obvious it may be.

It does set up the constant threat that Doss faces by being the lone moving target in a kill-zone, and creates a tension throughout the rescue sequence as he darts from body to body searching for signs of life, then augmenting a stretcher to drag his comrades-in-arms at a run to the escarpment edge and using one of the ropes used to initially scale it to lower them to awaiting medics. Then, with a fervently whispered "Help me, Lord—just one more," he runs back into the fire to find the next soul to save, only descending himself once he has run out of survivors.

Home from the Hill—Doss showers—a baptism of water and blood

Hacksaw Ridge compresses his initial rescue efforts to just one night. But, given the estimated 75 soldiers he saved, that would be 8 minutes spent per person, which feels impossible. Truth is, Doss was on Okinawa for three weeks. Three bloody weeks.

And when the final assault on the ridge took place, the troops would not go without Doss and the attack delayed to allow Doss to pray. A conversion—if you will—from his treatment in basic. That final mission is where Doss' actions—deemed "too impossible to believe" to include (after Doss is wounded from swatting and kicking enemy hand grenades away from his group, he gave up his stretcher to a more severely wounded soldier (he had 17 pieces of shrapnel in his leg), then, began treating other soldiers awaiting his turn, when his arm was shattered by rifle fire, and he crawled 300 hundred yards back to his position, so he could be evacuated.

It is an incredible story, made even more incredible in that it is, basically, true—such a man did exist, making a difference in an extreme and bloody war without firing a single shot. Saving lives. Not taking them.

Oh, yeah. Doss did this, too.

I see a lot of previews for films with religious themes these days, backed by church money. But, this one, I'll bet, didn't get a single piece of silver from them. Too harrowing, too vicious, too bloody (and too Seventh Day Adventist, probably). Ironically, though, it is one of the great movie about faith and its inspiration to perform miracles on Earth, even in the midst of evil, inspired by it absence.

The real Desmond Doss-in situ

Edge of Darkness (2010)

Written at the time of the film's release....

"Losing Your Edge"*
or
"I Love the British. They Deserve the Falklands."**

Those who've been reading this blog for awhile know of my deep and abiding love for the 1985 British mini-series "Edge of Darkness," Troy Kennedy-Martin's attempt to "politicize" the police procedurals that had become so prominent on the BBC. Martin took the standard murder mystery and made it a comment on the Thatcher era of politics,as well as on the growing nuclear industry in Britain and the apparent entanglements of British and American interests. Then, with director Martin Campbell, it became something more: not only a murder mystery, but a ghost story, a psychological drama and an almost mythological fable, with the Earth itself as a participating character in the balancing of the scales of justice. It also had strains of comic loopiness amid the gritty brownstones and harsh fluorescent lights of urban crime investigation, and an overall tragic tone of inevitability. Over six hours, it covered a lot of ground above and below the surface.

Campbell desired for many years to make a film of it and with his box-office clout resulting from resurrecting the Bond franchise with Casino Royale, he has finally managed to do it, bringing along many members of his Bond-team, including cinematographer Phil Meheux, editor extraordinaire Stuart Baird and costumer Lindy Hemming. Adapted by Andrew Bovell and William Monahan (he wrote The Departed), I've been curious (with an undercurrent of dread) of what the new version of one of my favorites would be like.

Well, this Edge of Darkness is not as good as the original, compressing and tossing a lot of the story to accommodate a two hour length. But, it's not half-bad either—efficient, taut, and, if you're paying attention, weaving its own commentary on the bad marriage between government and industry, especially in the post-911/W.years in which it is set. Gone is the humor, the tilted quality, the psychology and the Big Picture aspects of the tale. The ghost story is given up, as well, but it still manages to have the haunted quality of the original, while buttoning up the story for a less-delayed, more visceral conclusion.

Thomas Craven (Mel Gibson) is a widowed detective in the "Bahston" police force, welcoming his daughter Emma (Bojana Novakovic) home from a long absence. She's been using her Masters of Science degree interning at a local facility, the Northmoor nuclear facility working on cold fusion energy production ("It's very green," says its slimy CEO Bennett, played by a dead-eyed Danny Huston). But, at dinner, she begins to vomit uncontrollably and as Craven is desperately trying to take her to the hospital, they are attacked in the night. A single yell—"Craven!"—pierces the darkness and Emma is shot-gunned, mortally wounded.

The conventional wisdom is that it is one of Craven's enemies seeking revenge and missing his target, combining murder and accident. But Craven doggedly pursues clues, haunted by his daughter's memory, to pursue the assassin and get justice. Very quickly, the murder weapon and an old perp of Craven's is found—dead of a particularly nasty head-wound—the case apparently closed.

But not so fast. Acting alone, Craven digs further into Northmoor and his daughter's recent past to find out what happened, her cell-phone leading to a line of suspects that he questions seeking the truth. His lone-wolf quest puts him on the radar of Northmoor's private security firm and the U.S. government, particularly a "cleaner" named Darius Jedburgh (Ray Winstone), who makes his own inquiry, deciding if Craven should be allowed to proceed further or be stopped.

That's pretty much the opening thread of the original, too, except that the locales and characters are different. In the mini-series, British Intelligence is following Craven's investigation and they bring C.I.A. operative Jedburgh to provide Craven with information—a situation that creates an odd bond between the two men. In the original, Ronnie Craven is fragile, having had a break-down when his wife died, and keeps himself together by suppressing his emotions, except for the odd conversation he has with his dead daughter, whose clues lead him to different corners of the investigation. That may be his mental condition coming to hand, but it might not. He also has to deal with the guilt of being part of the authority that his activist daughter is working against. But Tommy Craven, of this version, is a coiled spring that only loosens in moments of extreme violence, periodically reliving his memories of his daughter and anything she says is non-specific to the case. A similar scene of Craven identifying his daughter's body is handled completely different. When the morgue nurse attempts to cover Emma's face after the identification, Gibson's Craven suddenly and violently hisses "Leave her alone!" Bob Peck's reaction was a loud wounded animal howl—"Leeeeave her!"

Jedburgh is a different creature, as well. Joe Don Baker's C.I.A. operative from the mini-series was a loud, Stetson-wearing Texan who waxed philosophically on the roots of all problems, arcane and mundane. Ray Winstone's British character is a low rumbling bear with a lower class argot, a disappearing act and an expression that gives nothing away but by what he says. In the mini-series, Craven and Jedburgh team up as an assault force to get clues, but in the 2010 film, they play opposite sides, aware of each other's presence and linked by common maladies and points of philosophy. The character is still amusing, but not a tragic-comic high wire act the way Baker played him.Tommy Craven (rather than his older mini-series brother Ronnie) is more aggressive, and frequently yells his dialogue in a cynical sneer ("I'm the guy with nothing to lose and I don't give a shit. So, fasten your seat-belt"), and, since there's less of a mystery to be solved due to the thuddingly obvious machinations of the bad guys, it all boils down to one man seeking revenge, something that was out of the question in the original. Those action set pieces are stunningly conceived and delivered by Campbell and shaped by Baird into especially visceral short bursts, with one bit of film mayhem coming so fast and so out of the blue that it practically knocks you out of your theater seat. It's refreshing in these days of salad-shooter editing to see fast, punchy dust-ups (and wet-works) that one can actually follow and has so much impact.

The new version is probably more satisfying for contemporary audiences jacked up on Red-Bull and obsessed with "closure;" I, for one, enormously enjoyed the hopeless quality of the original's ending with its ghoulishly ironic end-joke (which made everything all right in my eyes). But, the politics are still there, and this Edge does a fine job of being morphed into something for its time, with its stated philosophy of "It's not what it is—it's what it can be made to look like." In other words, you can have your yellow cake and eat it, too. Words to live and die by.

So, take it for what it is, it's a good boiling down and re-vamping, which has the dual effect of making it both fresh and too familiar, as so many things that made the original unique have been jettisoned out the old chute. But, as a display of technical craftsmanship, it is quite impressive.***

* I've known, ever since this project was announced, that whatever was done with it, it couldn't impact my admiration for the original mini-series. And it doesn't. It's like the story of a visitor to Raymond Chandler, asking him if he he felt bad about what the movies had done to some of his novels. Chandler took the guest into his library. "They haven't done anything to my novels," he said. "Look. They're still there." The mini-series is still a classic. And this one is good for what it is.

** A line from the original's Darius Jedburgh (played brilliantly by Joe Don Baker), as he and Craven sit, watching a dancing competition on the telly. "Look at that," says Jedburgh, before that particular line. "They don't have anything like this in the States." Well, they do now.

*** Since writing this, I've been looking at a smattering of reviews, and finding myself appalled. First off, a lot of reviewers seem to see this as a Mel Gibson production. It isn't, and although it makes it easier to knock the film if you mis-characterize it as such, Martin Campbell directed it. And too many reviews have led off with "Mel's being a martyr again" (which I suspect were cribbed from one AP review) which may be so, but he's got a way to go before he beats Charlton Heston's record. Quite a few get it wrong to compare it to Taken. Edge of Darkness isn't very original, no. It's based on the 1985 British mini-series (that's been established). Taken, however, isn't the heighth of originality, either, as it's a contemporary urban version of The Searchers. Finally, what genius over at "The Atlantic" hired Ed Koch to review movies, as he displays that he knows nothing about them? "How're you doing, Ed?" Badly.

Hamlet (1990)

Hamlet (Franco Zeffirelli, 1990) So, the big question was NOT "to be or not to be", it was: "Mel? Mel Gibson? Hamlet?" Zeffirelli was no slouch when directing Shakespeare with The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet already in his film-list. But Mel Gibson? Lethal Weapon/Mad Max Mel Gibson? How can this come to any good?

Turns out it can.

Seeing Zeffirelli's Hamlet for the first time is a film-long surprise at how good Gibson is in the role--his performance of the Elizabethan verse often inspired. He's backed by a stellar cast: Glenn Close (nine years older than Gibson) as Gertrude, Alan Bates as an on-guard Claudius, Ian Holm as a much more competent, even wily, Polonius, Paul Scofield, a brilliant ghost, Stephen Dillane as Horatio, and best of all, Helena Bonham Carter's Ophelia.

A second look at the film years later shows the seams. Gibson's Hamlet is all open-mouthed "busy" acting, a bit too manic and protesting too much. But it does make the case that his Hamlet is Glenn Close's son for she does exactly the same thing, gaping for the loges in Zeffirelli's rough-hewn settings. Dillane's "trying-to-take-it-all-in" Horatio and Bates' slimy, wary Claudius come off the best. But they're blown off the screen by the radical turn of Bonham Carter:
Ophelia--From the get-go, Helena Bonham-Carter plays the daughter of Polonius (and object of Hamlet's affections/mental torture), not as a frail flower, but a practical girl, down-to-Earth and obedient to her father, and loving to her brother. Bonham-Carter's line readings of the verse are flat and conversational, not lilting. Her reaction to Hamlet's bi-polarism are confusion, and incomprehension, not histrionics, and when her psyche snaps, there's no poetry in it. You could find her Ophelia on a city street-corner--agitated, rattling, eyes darting and fingers flailing; it's a powerful performance--a radical interpretation, scary and threatening. When she hands out flowers to the royal couple and her brother, she hands them weeds...and bones.
No wonder Tim Burton fell in love with her. Bonham Carter has never steered clear of the dark waters of her characters, and, in fact, will jump into the deep-end and maybe--maybe--swim up to the light. There's never been an Ophelia like this one, and disappointingly, I haven't seen one since. This is a feminist interpretation of Ophelia, one of real power while not sacrificing Shakespeare's text or the role's tragedy. I don't know if the Bard would recognize his creation in this performance, but the actor in him would be amazed.
Here are this film's other "Hamlet" touchstones:
The Ghost--Portrayed by Paul Scofield deep in the shadows, it is a heart-breaking performance, as the grasping King begs for satisfaction from his son, damned as he is for his sins. His Old King Hamlet has all the fear of Hell in his eyes, and a quavering in his voice, a King broken by the tortures of perdition. He's not a formal apparition of the supernatural, but a ghost who is, himself, haunted, and seeks out his son for a last chance at salvation. That's quite a guilt-trip he lays of Hamlet--even more so than a revenge mission. No wonder Gibson's Hamlet looks panicky through the whole movie.
Polonius--verbose he may be, but he's no fool. In fact, as played by Ian Holm, he's a bit of a snake-in-the-grass, currying favor with a calculated duplicitousness. And quite capable of sacrificing his daughter in order to further the fortunes of his son Laertes. And he lets her know in no uncertain terms that she must perform her duties as bait for the good of her family, though not necessarily for her own. His fate seems particularly deserved, rather than an unfortunate ironic happenstance in Elsinore's machinations.
The "To Be Or Not To Be" speech--Gibson walks down stone stairs into the dark to contemplate action/inaction and life/death and does well with "the" speech. His Hamlet is usually at wit's end (heh), but here he is hushed and still, as if not to wake the dead. Apt, as the location he's chosen to do his ruminating is the burial site for old King Hamlet. That's the King's sarcophagous in the back-ground of the screen-cap. Hamlet might be in his own version of Hell during the speech.

Gritty, grimy, with the drama accentuated rather than the artifice of the verse, this Hamlet is a fine interpretation. Gibson might have been the star (and the chief draw), but the humanization of the ghost and the bodice-ripping interpretation of Ophelia make it one to remember in the further explorations of The Great Play.