Few films impact the national psyche with as much force as Peter Weir’s 1981 hit starring Mark Lee and Mel Gibson as young athletes shipped off to war. Gallipoli is one of the best loved and most quintessentially “Australian” films. It contemplates themes as baked in to national identity as the fur of a koala and the gristle of a meat pie – from mateship and camaraderie to perceptions of justice (the eternal “fair go”) and obsession with sport and physical performance.



This initially heart-warming but ultimately devastating story begins in Western Australia in 1915 with a training sequence between a drill sergeant-like coach and runner, Archy (Lee). Before Archy blazes through a makeshift finishing line (a string attached to two sticks stuck in the ground) he jogs on the spot and partakes in one of Australian cinema’s most famous exchanges.

“What are your legs?”

“Springs. Steel springs.”

“What are they going to do?”

“Hurl me down the track.”

“How fast can you run?”

“As fast as a leopard.”

“How fast are you going to run?”

“As fast as a leopard.”



Archy crouches and puts his hands in the dirt; later his hands will be covered by a different kind of crud, far away from the Aussie outback. For the first 25 minutes, Gallipoli is an archetypal sports movie, the protagonist establishing his skills in against-the-odds challenges (he outruns a man on a horse then wins a race with mangled feet).



The film begins and ends with Archy running. It could be interpreted as a metaphor for the cruel task taken on by professional athletes: the war against themselves and others, the sweat and tears expended for the arguably futile nature of it all – a universe in which, as certain as bodies slain in battle fields, one record is eclipsed by another. It also reads as a commentary on how emerging genius can be stymied in a world obsessed with other, crueller things, such as fighting and dying for patches of land.

But the most potent interpretation of Gallipoli – and one that hasn’t lost a jot of power all these years later – concerns Weir and screenwriter David Williamson’s scathing deconstruction of the atavistic perception of war as a great adventure.

“Come and find out how to get into the greatest game of them all,” an army recruiter yells after a local race. Archy takes up the challenge, viewing fighting for his country as an obligation and another way of pushing himself to mental and physical greatness.

The energy of the film builds to a gasp-inducing conclusion in which the protagonist’s body connects with a torrent of bullets – a harrowing final kablamo that’s still, to this day, the highest-impact ending of any Australian film. For films that juxtapose the beauty of nature and the artifice of war, it’s hard to match the painful elegance of All Quiet on the Western Front (both the 1930 and 1979 adaptations), when a character reaches for a butterfly and is shot in the head by a sniper. But Weir and Williamson’s trading of emotional complexity for brutal shock hardly seems out of place given the subject matter.

So great is the impact of Gallipoli’s ending and the moments leading up to it that it’s easy to forget only a small portion of the film is based on the battlefield. The core of it is a heart on sleeve bromance between Archy and co-runner Frank (Mel Gibson), whose friendship blossoms after initial rivalry. Most of it is about forming friendships, leaving home and preparing for war. An hour in, the characters are still training in pretend combat on desert sand in Cairo.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Weir’s Gallipoli: hasn’t lost a jot of power all these years later.



They eventually arrive on the shores of Gallipoli, with explosions going off like firecrackers. Suddenly this war film becomes a real war film – or so it seems. Weir’s cameras are reluctant to enter the battle, viewing fighting as a largely off-frame activity, for context rather than action. There is such a strong sense of optimism, a sense the characters aren’t in any imminent threat, shrewdly and careful maintained, that when the danger finally hits in the last 20 minutes, it hits hard.

This final sequence is a horrifying spectacle in which allied troops, following orders to storm the enemy, barely get over the top of the trenches. The men are mowed down from afar and slain like cattle. “They are being cut down before they can get five yards,” shrieks Frank to a superior, only to be told the attack must proceed. When he gets word the big boss is rethinking the attack, Frank runs like hell to impart the news, but he’s too late. Bill Hunter, as Major Barton, walks alongside his men, understanding they are being sent to certain death. One of them recites the Lord’s Prayer.

Then Weir introduces the mother of all callbacks. He rests the frame on Archy, who asks himself: “How fast are you going to run?” The answer is nowhere near fast enough.