Gallipoli

"The band played Waltzing Matilda,
when we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs,
then we started all over again" - Eric Bogle

The stark beauty of the horizon on the Australian outback contrasts with the brutal hell of the Dardanelles, a land crisscrossed by trenches scratched into the rock and artillery shells, loud and violent, send booming reports across the bay. Gallipoli is not about the loss of innocence, like so many other lesser war films; the film portrays the idealism that young men are filled with and how that desire to do right by their country and family is exploited by the generals in their masses. The 500,000 soldiers who died over the 8-month campaign at Gallipoli in 1915 fought over hard ground, and none of it gave way. Each side buried their dead, then pulled out from the Suvla Bay.

Archy (Mark Lee), the prize-winning runner, believes that he can outpace the danger and return home safe, and convinces Frank (Mel Gibson), a fellow runner, to enlist. Their training consists of war games and visits to local prostitutes, donkey rides in emulation and derision of the stiff Britons that look down on the Australians from atop their horses, and drilling at the foot of the Great Pyramid and Sphinx; nothing they do will prepare them for going over the top. Both run like leopards: one to try to stay alive and the other to relay the message that the attack should stop just before it reaches critical mass. They are both too late, pawns caught in the deadly the game the world powers waged over mere miles of land.