Gibson Goes for Gentility with ‘Hacksaw Ridge’

hacksaw-ridge-mel-gibson

Desmond Doss is that kind of man who we wish we would have heard of sooner rather than later. If you’ve already known the name and the story before hearing about this movie, kudos. But for people like me, who don’t know what a “conscientious cooperator” is or who thinks that heroes can only be made by weapons, Desmond Doss’ story will fascinate you.

jnj8sn0
Andrew Garfield as Desmond Doss in Hacksaw Ridge

You see, Private Desmond Doss (played with power and nuance by Andrew Garfield) was a U.S. soldier who never fired a weapon during his time in WWII. Because of his Seventh-Day Adventist beliefs, Doss refused to even hold, much less fire, a weapon for fear of taking another man’s life. Obviously, such a notion would seem ludicrous to you, to me, to Doss’ comrades, and their superiors (and it was, as the superiors actively tried to have him discharged). But against all physical and verbal abuse, Doss became a medic, and eventually saved the lives of 75 men during the battle of Okinawa, all without a gun. He won the Medal of Honor in 1945.

Mel Gibson’s return to directing is a remarkable one. Having stayed away from directing for a decade, Gibson returns with a wonderfully old-school film, made in the classic movie-making traditions that he was raised on. Though only two hours and some minutes, Gibson’s latest is like an epic war picture of old, as it follows the story and heroics of Doss. There is a romantic courtship between Desmond and his wife, Dorothy (Teresa Palmer). There is the triumph of the human spirit, as Doss fights for his right to belong without a weapon. And then there is the war, which is captured effectively in all its horror.

pqqj297
Vince Vaughn as Sergeant Howell in Hacksaw Ridge

As one would expect from the director’s penchant for violence, the Okinawa scenes are brutal and uncompromising. You see legs reduced to fleshy tendons, and pink intestines spilling out by the pound. Blood spurts galore. It’s all very evocative of Saving Private Ryan, which, as you know, opens with an all-out ambush on American soldiers on Omaha Beach. The second half of “Hacksaw” is just as tense, especially during a scene where Doss hides his comrade’s wounded body from the Japanese soldiers before dragging him to safety.

Hacksaw Ridge is very much a visceral film, playing off of a human’s capacity to stand by his convictions. But it has a quality that makes it stand against other war films like American Sniper or Gibson’s own Braveheart—movies I feel replace fact with fiction in order to ingratiate themselves with audiences through a false sense of “heroism.”  What is so brilliant about ‘Hacksaw’ is that hardly anything outside of Doss’ time in the army is exaggerated to make this story worth telling. The real Desmond Doss did face adversity because of his religion. The real Desmond Doss did not bring a gun into one of the deadliest wars in human history. And yet, the real Desmond Doss saved 75 men and received the highest military honor a soldier can receive (an award, he humbly notes, he didn’t deserve). This movie works because it doesn’t pander with contrived emotions, allowing Desmond’s actions on the battlefield to speak for themselves. Though it would feel gaudy in other films, we know this actually happened, so the sentiment of triumph feels earned.

I don’t often enjoy war movies because of the inherent pessimism that plagues them (but that’s not to say I can’t appreciate the experience of the ugly burden that soldiers carry in battle). But Hacksaw Ridge isn’t really a war movie, nor is it American propaganda; it’s a masterfully-crafted story of a Virginian man who succeeded in being gentle in a world of brutality, and I’d be kidding myself if I didn’t want to cheer by the end.


MARK BAUTISTA | KXSU Arts Reporter

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*

Tags: , ,