Gallipoli (1981) 
Weir’d
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Coincidentally, this is the second Peter Weir movie for me to review in a row. Maybe I should watch Dead Poets society to make it a triumvarate. Gallipoli paints an interesting picture of World War I. Weir spends most of the movie showing how these guys end up in the army, how great they are and depicting the ealy 1900 Aussie lifestyle.
Eventually, they end up in trench warfare in Turkey. The Aussies are part of an offensive and if you know anything about WWI, you can probably guess how that turns out. The trench lifestyle seemed a like it should have been a bit more unpleasant, but perhaps things were nicer in Turkey than they were in France.
One thing that was interesting is that the characters who really seemed to see the conflict accurately ended up being somewhat marginalized. The beautiful young Mel Gibson does a good job of being conflicted with some of his trademark hyper laughing and urgent yelling in anguish. Still even though you could see the stomach punch coming from the first third of the movie, it gets ya.
I was also a litte surprising that this thing was rated pg. The movie was literally swimming with male asses. There were also some Egyptian whore t and a thrown in. So be wary of showing the film to middle school students like I got to yesterday.
