Last summer at the Venice Film Festival saw the first stirrings that Mel Gibson had fully found his way back into the industry’s good graces. He arrived on the Lido with his new film “Hacksaw Ridge,” and it was greeted with a 10-minute standing ovation at the premiere. After spending a decade trying to rebuild his image following a DUI arrest in 2006 during which he unleashed sexist and anti-Semitic insults and comments, and the leak of phone calls to his ex-wife in 2010 which featured more racist and sexist language (and saw his longtime agency WME drop him as a client as a result), each of those 10 minutes must’ve felt like a lifetime for Gibson. It looked like redemption had finally arrived for the embattled filmmaker.
READ MORE: Mel Gibson’s Viscerally Affecting But Ethically Worrisome ‘Hacksaw Ridge’ [Venice Review]
However, you could still feel an air of hesitancy around “Hacksaw Ridge.” While some in Hollywood extended an olive branch to Gibson over the past 10 years, giving him roles in B-movie fare like “Machete Kills” and “The Expendables 3,” he remained damaged goods. And I suspect that Lionsgate kept “Hacksaw Ridge” from influential stateside festivals like TIFF and New York Film Festival precisely because they could never be quite certain how the Gibson narrative would play out in that heated awards-season atmosphere, where contenders for the rest of the year are made. After watching Nate Parker‘s campaign for “The Birth Of A Nation” unravel, in retrospect, it only benefitted further for “Hacksaw Ridge” not to have been quite in the conversation at that point, as it allowed Gibson and his team to keep a distance, lay low, and carefully plot how they would approach the months ahead. However, they would find out that a well-received movie heals all wounds, as producer Bill Mechanic‘s recent comments likely reflect how many in Hollywood now feel about writer/director/actor.
“I didn’t care about what happened in the past.”
“Mel was the best director to make the movie,” he told Australian Associated Press (via GQ). “I didn’t care about what happened in the past. We did ‘Braveheart‘ together 20 years ago and what he did on the battlefield and understanding Mel, I knew he was the right guy.”
Gibson has helped his own cause, too, hitting the press circuit hard for “Hacksaw Ridge,” facing questions about his past directly, and putting forth the narrative of a man who’s committed to recovery by joining Alcoholics Anonymous, and continued to work hard while he waited for the doors of opportunity to re-open to him.
“Well, the past 10 years have been interesting. I don’t feel like this is some kind of comeback for me, I just feel like it’s good. But I was always busy during that time, and I was always writing and developing stuff. Traditionally, people have not been too willing to back the things that I wanted to generate, so I used to put my hand in my pocket and do it myself,” he told The New Zealand Herald.
READ MORE: Why We Have To Separate The Art From The Artist, And Why We Can’t
And there has been a sense all awards season that the industry has unofficially determined that Gibson has paid his penance. In October, the first Academy screening of “Hacksaw Ridge” also saw Gibson receive a standing ovation, with Mechanic imploring the crowd, “Show your heart — not just your applause — for Mel Gibson.”
With six Oscar nominations for “Hacksaw Ridge” including Best Picture and Best Director, the Academy really has opened their arms for Gibson, and it’s safe to say his return to Hollywood is complete.
Oscar campaigns can get ugly, and while there’s a possibility of Gibson’s comments resurfacing in the weeks ahead, there seems to be an overriding feeling that bringing them up again might be poor sport. Nonetheless, this isn’t to say we should simply ignore Gibson’s past, nor diminish what he’s said and done, but it’s perhaps an important reminder that untangling art from the artist is a continually evolving process. And while Hollywood has largely welcomed Gibson back, not everyone will be quick to forget his history.
The year ahead will see Gibson starring in “The Professsor And The Madman” opposite Sean Penn, who is also something of an outsider at the moment. It’ll certainly be a strange thing if Gibson is the one who helps Penn also return to the warmth of the limelight. But for now, he’s going to bask in it himself.