“A True Story,” announces the opening title of Mel Gibson‘s viscerally affecting but ethically worrisome “Hacksaw Ridge.” Not “based on a true story” or “inspired by a true story” or the currently in vogue “inspired by real events,” but “a true story.” Like the treasured pocket Bible given to our hero by his best gal, this is Gospel. And there are many facts contained within, the most important being that Desmond Doss, a young, unarmed Seventh Day Adventist and conscientious objector serving as a medic during the Battle of Okinawa, singlehandedly rescued 75 wounded men in one night and was later awarded the Medal of Honor. He may have credited God, but surely we should credit Desmond Doss, because you do not have to be a Christian or even a believer to understand that his was a miraculous feat of grace and courage. But along with screenwriters Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight, Gibson, whose lack of directorial subtlety but skill with action both reach an apex here, is not content to tell the true story of Desmond Doss and his unshakeable, courage-giving faith. He wants to convince us that his faith was, in fact, the truth.
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That might seem like a semantic qualm, but the difference between those two impulses is the difference between the sober, bloody but uplifting war epic that “Hacksaw Ridge” could be, and the agenda-based allegory it turns into. It makes this starry, well-mounted, lavish period war film into essentially a grander-than-usual entry into the faith-based category, though with admittedly a sight more rat-nibbled corpses than “God’s Not Dead” gave us.
With that aim, perhaps it’s appropriate that so much of the film outside the battle scenes (which includes a prologue which does for burning soldiers cartwheeling in slow-motion agony what “Saving Private Ryan” did for helmet-piercing bullets) feels so traditionalist. We begin with Desmond as a young boy, roughhousing with his brother under the careless eye of his alcoholic, violent father (Hugo Weaving), who is afflicted with chronic survivor’s guilt and what we’d now call PTSD, following his service in World War I. The horseplay gets out of hand, and Desmond goes too far, hitting his brother with a brick, to the panic of his mother (Rachel Griffiths) and to the predictable belt-lashing of his father. His brother recovers but Desmond has learned his lesson and has taken the Sixth Commandment very much to heart: Thou shalt not kill.
Fifteen years later, Desmond (Andrew Garfield, lamblike) falls chastely and properly for nurse Dorothy (Teresa Palmer, dewy), but, as he says later, “when the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, I took it personal,” and, against the wishes of his parents, follows in the footsteps of his brother and decides to enlist. He can reconcile this with his devout observation of that pesky Sixth Commandment, not by altering the goalposts under the terms of war as most of his fellow serving Christians do, but by enlisting as a medic and vowing never to touch a rifle.
Predictably, this causes some consternation at boot camp amongst his company (who are introduced in one of those getting-to-know-you scenes in the barracks where each is given one single character trait or physical attribute by which we’ll be able to identify them later when they’re caked in blood). His Sergeant (played in the film’s wittiest role by a pretty good Vince Vaughn), his commanding officer (Sam Worthington), and fellow soldier Smitty (Luke Bracey) certainly don’t want a conscientious objector in their number, and do all they can to force him to quit. Doss doesn’t, nor does he compromise on his non-violence. All of this stuff is surprisingly talky and rather fustily mounted, not helped by an omnipresent, ploddingly literal score from Rupert Gregson-Williams that tells us exactly what to feel about everything, and in which the climactic motif is angelic choirs underpinned by rushing martial percussion. There’s even a point where the sunny, upbeat “going to meet my girl!” melody is interrupted for about two seconds by dark notes of foreboding as Desmond runs into a heavily scarred veteran leaving the hospital before the chirpiness resumes.
However, the filmmaking comes together much better during those grisly, thunderous battle scenes, when the soldiers are, so to speak, not in Kansas anymore — except for the hackneyed line of dialogue in which Vaughn actually says, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Explosions and injuries and bodies mercilessly pulverized by machine-gun fire seem so much where Gibson’s heart and talents obviously lie. But the uncompromisingly gruesome, and undoubtedly impressive, fighting sequences are also punctuated by mishandled, corny beats, like when a Japanese soldier and an American grapple with a primed grenade, and realizing neither will let go, stare into each others’ eyes and bellow until they both explode.
But the real problems run much deeper than these relatively surface criticisms. Doss is built into a quasi-Messianic figure, a point hammered home at one point when, although he’s being lowered on a stretcher, the camera wheels around underneath him to make it look like he’s being raised heavenward, as celestial sun flares bounce off the lens. This singleminded agenda also has the effect of flattening everything else out. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a war movie this one-sided, this unconcerned with acknowledging the humanity of the combatants on both sides. Indeed, the only two Japanese soldiers at all individualized are a wounded man whom Doss, with Christlike compassion, treats, and an officer who, in a single brief scene, commits a queasily fetishized slow-motion ritual seppuku.
Even more fundamentally, there’s the thorny question of what this “true story” leaves out, because no true story can ever be the whole truth. No matter how much one’s personal principles may line up with those of Doss, there are incredibly difficult moral quandaries his admirable stance sets up, but the film does not contend with any of those. Furthermore, there is something very uncomfortable about the suggestion that it was the purity of Doss’ faith that carried the day, because it implies that the dead and the defeated (like the company who were decimated the day before, their straggling remnants filing past catatonically with that “Full Metal Jacket” stare) were somehow not pure enough, and that does a pretty huge disservice to the many devout Christians who fell throughout the war.
The real Doss, who died in 2006, shows up in a brief, moving interview just before the credits roll, adding a further lick of truthiness to Gibson’s interpretation of events. And one of the most resonant things he says is that he still believes that “no one should be forced to act against their convictions.” But this tale of real-life heroism seems less a celebration of humanist convictions than a glorification of religious intransigence and a declaration of the moral superiority of the faithful over the faithless. And so, though its broad-based box office prospects are good, and though it certainly announces Gibson’s return to the fray as a director of grand, emotive spectacle, some of us might find the only response is to conscientiously object. [C]
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