It’s been an uneven year for faith-based films, highlighted most recently by the major financial and critical flop of the $100M reboot of “Ben-Hur.”
But the tide may be changing, if the reception to “Hacksaw Ridge” at the recent Venice Film Festival is any indication. From Deadline.com:
After wowing critics at early morning press screenings on Sunday, Mel Gibson’s pacifist World War II action drama, Hacksaw Ridge, had its red carpet world premiere out of competition at the Venice Film Festival last night. The film played to a roughly 10-minute standing ovation — long standing-Os are not as common a happenstance on the Lido as they are at some other festivals. At about six minutes into the ovation, Gibson and the actors were asked to go down into the audience.
Andrew Garfield stars as real-life Army medic Desmond Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist who volunteered to serve but never wanted to touch a gun (it’s not just religious; he has personal and family reasons, too). Sent to Okinawa, he stays behind on an isolated battlefield and manages to save at least 75 wounded men, on his own, during one fateful night.
Said Gibson to the press corps:
“A lot of attention needs to be paid to our warriors; they need some love and understanding. I hope this film imparts that message. If it does nothing but that, that’s great.”
This is also not a movie where Doss’ faith is mentioned and then sidelined. It’s front and center throughout, and is a main motivation for everything his character does. And yet, the secular critics were impressed.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
“Hacksaw Ridge” is Mel Gibson’s Hollywood redemption, and on his own weird, twisted, neurotic, bloody, gory, violence-obsessed terms. I saw it this morning at the Venice Film Festival, and it’s a terrific movie — in every sense of the word terrific.
…
I feel an impulse to resist Gibson’s dark impulses, having seen them destroy two otherwise interesting movies, “The Passion of the Christ” and “Apocalypto.” To see his films is to wonder what is going on in this man’s mind. At the same time, I just sat in a chair for two hours and have a better idea of what it might be like to go to war that I might have ever had in my life, because the battle scenes in “Hacksaw Ridge” make the first half hour of “Saving Private Ryan” look like a Noel Coward play. There’s no logic to them — there’s filmic logic, in that you can follow them. But there’s no logic to how battles proceed. It is chaos and horror and carnage on a scale you really can’t imagine.
Ten years have passed along with much uncomfortable tabloid scrutiny since Mel Gibson’s last film as director, Apocalypto. Back in the saddle with Hacksaw Ridge, he once again proves himself a muscular storyteller who knows exactly how to raise a pulse, heighten emotion and build intensity to explosive peaks. Themes of courage, patriotism, faith and unwavering adherence to personal beliefs have been a constant through Gibson’s directing projects, as has a fascination with bloodshed and gore. Those qualities serve this powerful true story of heroism without violence extremely well, overcoming its occasional cliched battle-movie tropes to provide stirring drama.
Yet at the center of this modern hell of machine-tooled chaos and pain, there is Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield), a soldier who refuses to carry a gun because it is against his values. He’s a conscientious objector who acts as a medic. But because he’s every bit as devoted to serving in the war as he is to never once firing a bullet, he isn’t just caring for soldiers. He’s on the front lines, in the thick of the thick of it, without a weapon to protect him, and the film exalts not just his courage but his whole withdrawal from violence.
…
Gibson’s staging of the horror of combat generates enough shock and awe to earn comparison to the famous opening sequence of “Saving Private Ryan,” although it must be said that he borrows a lot from (and never matches) Spielberg’s virtuosity. Yet Gibson creates a blistering cinematic battleground all his own. Each time the fight breaks out again, it’s so relentless that you wonder how anyone could survive it.
The real story that “Hacksaw Ridge” is telling, of course, is Desmond’s, and Gibson stages it in straightforward anecdotes of compassion under fire …
Lionsgate releases the film on Nov. 4. I recently saw a rough cut and came away as impressed as the other reviewers. I’ll be posting a review of my own closer to release, once I get to see the finished film.
Gibson is the only man so far to knock it out of the ballpark with a faith-based film, and if this one’s box office lives up to its advance billing, he may have another hit on his hands (and, of course, there’s that “Passion of the Christ” sequel, focusing on the Resurrection, that he’s also working on).
Welcome back, Mel. We’re still praying for you.
Here’s the trailer …
And some background on the real Desmond Doss:
Image: Courtesy Lionsgate
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