Although the film’s marketing seems to have bent over
backwards to hide it, “Hacksaw Ridge” is every inch a Mel Gibson movie. In
telling the true story of WWII Army medic Desmond T. Doss (Andrew Garfield), a
war hero whose deeply held religious views led him to enlist in the army
despite an adamant refusal to even pick up a weapon, Gibson is given free rein
to indulge his pet obsessions as a filmmaker. Like his prior films, “Hacksaw
Ridge” revolves around a man who suffers enormously for his beliefs; Gibson
remains fascinated by the idea of faith as an endurance test.
As a movie about faith that’s also a merciless,
viscera-drenched reminder that war is hell, “Hacksaw Ridge” can sometimes feel
like a story at odds with itself. But Andrew Garfield’s strong lead performance
and Gibson’s sure hand as a director of action ensures that his film is often
quite powerful and undeniably effective at what it sets out to achieve.
We begin with Doss’s early years in small-town Lynchburg,
Virginia, and his home life growing up with a drunken, abusive World War I
veteran father (Hugo Weaving, going big and broad with his performance) and
long-suffering mother (Rachel Griffiths), two relationships that forged his
belief system. These early scenes are heavy on sun-dappled Americana — Gibson
aims for the feel of living inside the paintings of Norman Rockwell — and we
see Doss develop a sweetly chaste romance with Dorothy (Teresa Palmer), a nurse
at the hospital in his hometown. It’s all fine, but a little hokey, and
thankfully Gibson gets most of the melodrama out of his system early.
As the town’s young men head off to war, Doss wants to
perform his patriotic duty but, holding strictly to the commandment against
killing, he refuses to pick up a gun. He believes that by enlisting as a medic,
he can serve by saving lives instead of taking them. We follow him to boot camp,
where his officers (headed by drill sergeant Vince Vaughn) see him as a
disciplinary concern, and attempt to drum him out of the army by pitting the
rest of the platoon against him until he’s enduring regular beatings from
fellow soldiers who view his actions (or lack thereof) as simple cowardice.
He’s eventually taken to trial, and the film morphs into a
courtroom drama for a time as Doss finds himself threatened with court martial
for disobeying the orders of his commanding officers. But when everyone is
reminded that, “Hey what he’s doing isn’t illegal,” he’s free to carry on his
merry way, and is shipped off to Japan to join in the bloody Battle of Okinawa.
“Hacksaw Ridge” is at its strongest during this second half,
when we’re allowed to see what Doss’s brand of heroism actually looks like in
action. He was the first conscientious objector to receive the Congressional
Medal of Honor, and we get to see exactly why that is. The battle sequences are
exciting and intense, and they also contain enough gore and violence to put
most slasher movies to shame: bodies are maimed, burned, blown apart,
intestines spilled, corpses are used as shields. It’s grim, gruesome stuff.
But as brilliant as the filmmaking often is, it’s here where
there’s a bit of a disconnect in the film. For a movie
that’s ostensibly a celebration of pacifism, it’s a bit odd to see the carnage
presented with such obvious relish. While recognizing that those scenes serve
to establish stakes, underlining the sheer amount of courage it took for Doss
to walk into battle without even the protection of a rifle, there’s still a
sense that the film is trying to have its cake and eat it, too.
Andrew Garfield’s performance is crucial in allowing the film
to work as well as it does. The actor has always been an intensely likeable
screen presence; he’s predictably warm and charming in the early scenes, but
he’s equally adept at playing a grimly determined soldier at war. While
Gibson’s instinct is to deify Doss, Garfield shows us hints of darkness within.
He shows us exactly how Desmond Doss is able to reconcile his beliefs through
his actions. The film that surrounds him, however, is another story entirely.
This article appears in Nov 2-8, 2016.
