Hacksaw Ridge
Twenty-two years ago, Mel Gibson immortalized the persecution of William Wallace of Scotland in a story about nationalism and freedom (of religion). Then nine years later he directed the gruesome persecution of Jesus of Nazareth and his plight against the Holy Roman Empire. Finally, he released a film about the Spanish conquistadors bringing Christianity to the Mayan Mesoamericans.
In 2017, Mel Gibson has his new film out. An updating of his film. You know, the one about a religious man being persecuted in a time of war and upheaval. Mel Gibson has made the same film over and over in his career, however, amazingly, this is not an insult. Hacksaw Ridge is the story of a young Seventh Day Adventist (Andrew Garfield) who enlists in the US military out of principle to fight the good fight after Pearl Harbour. However the nature of his religious beliefs brush up against his military superiors (Vince Vaughan) as he refuses to pick up a rifle; he wants to be a medic – to heal, not kill. This leads to aggressive alienation amongst his fellow troops as they are all punished for his insubordination, yet on the battlefield he redeems himself in a night of extraordinary bravery up against the Japanese army on Hacksaw Ridge, Okinawa. Gibson attempts to spend the first act of Hacksaw presenting a protagonist of unparalleled religious conviction, a man who would truly suffer for his pacifist beliefs (sound familiar?!). Yet then delivers one of the most bloody and violent second acts released in cinemas this year. All suggestions that war is hell and principles of nonviolence are demolished (literally) in the war sequence – a sequence that lasts at least 40 minutes and has body parts flying in all directions… The very title of the film suggests that the characters are on a knife-edge, a violent metaphor if ever there was one. Hacksaw is based on a true story – an incredible true story, a quite-frankly unbelievable true story that people might describe as ‘just like a movie’ – but like all of Gibson’s true stories (Jesus’s authenticity aside), all they seem to do is reassure an audience that outsiders with extreme religious and nationalist beliefs are heroes in difficult times. For a man that has been accused of such racism and prejudice, it seems he’s just talking about himself again…
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