GALLIPOLI- (GELIBOLU) The front line experience

I do not command you to fight, I command you to die. 
In the time it will take us to die we can be replenished by new forces.
Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)

GELIBOLU is the Turkish documentary on Gallipoli, by director Tolga Örnek.

Having seen several times Peter Weir’s film “Gallipoli”, I was interested in watching the Turkish counterpart, especially knowing that it is almost entirely based on surviving diaries, letters and photographs from both sides of the war.

Gelibolu surpassed all my expectations. It is an objective account of what happened at Gallipoli, in which director Tolga Örnek presents war itself as the sole enemy in an absolute unbiased and profoundly humane and heartfelt portrayal of events.

The film recounts the events as they unfolded chronologically, always coming back to the actual diaries and letters of two British, three New Zealand, three Australian and two Turkish soldiers, beautifully read by Jeremy irons and Sam Neil.

Against the backdrop of the war, we witness the path of these soldiers on both sides of the war, their thoughts, their wishes, their fears, their innocence laid bare though their letters, existing photographs and even films of the actual training camps in Egypt as well as battle scene locations and re-enactments.

There are also interviews with several experts, newspaper headlines and areal maps, all of it thoughtfully and meticulously assembled. Tolga Örnek’s documentary actually pierces through the story with a fierce realism that is perhaps only equaled by Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah.

There is, aside from the realism of the portrayal, a splendid and unique sense of intimacy in hearing these letters that make up the texture of the film. We feel that we know these men. Their words echo with tremendous accuracy the realities of war. The music of Demir Demirkan is simply beyond words. 

The pictures that follow are all taken from the film and portray real soldiers in the field and with their families.

On an inscription overlooking Anzac cove (Where the allied troops landed), one can read the following quote from Mustafa Kemal (Who went on to lead Turkey out of the Ottoman era as Atatürk):

Those heroes that shed their blood 

and lost their lives… 

You are now living in the soil of a friendly country. 

Therefore rest in peace. 

There is no difference between the Johnnies

and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side 

here in this country of ours… 

You, the mothers, 

who sent their sons from faraway countries 

wipe away your tears; 

your sons are now lying in our bosom 

and are in peace, 

after having lost their lives on this land they have 

become our sons as well.

From Wikipedia:

Mustafa Kemal exceeding his authority and contravening orders in so doing. His speech "I do not command you to fight, I command you to die. In the time it will take us to die we can be replenished by new forces" ( Turkish: "Ben size taaruzu değil, ölmeyi emrediyorum. Biz ölünceye kadar geçecek zaman zarfında yerimize başka kuvvetler ve kumandanlar geçebilir") has entered history.

The 57th Regiment, led by Lieutenant Colonel Huseyin Avni, fulfilled the order precisely. 

The entire regiment fell in battle.

Total Allied deaths were 43,000 British, 15,000 French, 8,700 Australians, 2,700 New Zealanders and 1,370 Indians. Total Turkish deaths were around 60,000. New Zealanders suffered the highest percentage of Allied deaths when compared with population size, but the percentage of Turkish deaths was almost twice theirs.

2015 will mark the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing.

The documentary ends with the narration of the longest Turkish letter to survive the battle, written by a young Turkish captain on May the 31^st 1915:

Monday, may 31 1915

Ariburnu

To my beloved father and mother,

Dear father, beloved mother,

During the first terrible battle I fought at Ariburnu, a bullet grazed my right side and passed through my trousers. God be praised. I was spared, but, I do not hope to survive future battles in which I will fight.

I am writing these lines so you have something to remember me by.

I thank God that he enabled me to become a soldier and reach this rank. You, as my parents, did all you could to raise me and make it possible for me to serve my country and my people. You are my heart, you are my soul and you are the inspiration to my life. 
I am eternally grateful to God and to you.

Beloved father, dearest mother, I entrust my beloved wife, and my dear son, first to God and then to your protection. Please do for them whatever is possible. Please help my wife in raising my son and providing him with the necessary education.  I know that we are not wealthy or people of means. So I know I cannot ask for anything more than what is possible. 
To ask would be quite in vain.

Please give the enclosed letter addressed to my wife into her own hands.  
She will be devastated. So please do what you can to console her grief. 
She will weep and mourn, please comfort her…

Dear relatives, beloved friends and comrades, farewell to you all.

All of you please bid me farewell and pray for my soul. I will pray for yours.

Beloved father and mother, I eternally entrust you to God.

Farewell

Your son Mehmet Tevfik

Mehmet Tevfik was killed 2 weeks later.

The film: Turkish original version)

RELEASED: November 2005

Director: Tolga Örnek

Running Time: 90 mn

Cast: (Narrated by): Sam Neil, Jeremy Irons

Rating: 4,5 stars

GALLIPOLI

"Wilfred... was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a foot-race, with all the speed he could compass."

(Taken  from C.E.W. Bean's Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918 describing Private Wilfred Harper of the 10th Light Horse during the attack at the Nek)

Gallipoli is the setting of Australia’s and New Zealand’s dramatic involvement in the first world war, when allied forces tried (and failed) to reach Constantinople in order to knock Turkey out of the war and secure a sea route to Russia. With fierce battle and heavy losses on both sides, Gallipoli was one of the bloodiest battles of the first world war.

The film follows the journey of two friends from rural Australia, Archy Hamilton (played by Mark lee) and Frank Dunne (played by Mel Gibson), both runners, who cross the desert to join the 10th Light Horse Regiment in Perth. Archy sees a purpose in joining. The war appears to him as something meaningful and larger than life. Frank who is penniless joins with no real purpose in mind. After successfully enlisting in Perth, they are sent to Egypt to an Australian training camp before leaving to Gallipoli.

The opening scene of the film shows us Archy training at dusk in the Australian outback, under the strong supervision of his uncle. He is one of the fastest runners in Australia and may very well become a champion, but Archy has other aspirations, that of joining the great war and doing something meaningful.

The two friends cross the desert to reach Perth. They get lost and are literally saved by an old man who happened to cross their path and gives them water and food. The old man has never heard of the European war and finds it intriguing that these two young lads wish to participate in such a remote war.

Later on, at the Egypt camp we see them playing rugby with other troops between the sphinx and the pyramids. We see them climbing a pyramid and engraving their names on a stone for posterity.

One of the most memorable moments I have seen in cinema, is the transition that happens between the farewell ball where you see them dancing a Strauss Waltz, to the landing at night on the Turkish peninsula, with Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor in the background. The moment is shattering and feels like a scene from Dante’s inferno.

Another majestic use of music in the film is Jean Michel Jarre’s “Oxygene” juxtaposed to the running and desert scenes, the “solar” moments of the film. It contrasts sharply with the classical music and acts swiftly as a lifeline, a pulsating beat, a driving force.

What is extraordinary about the story is the way it is told, almost like a tribute to life itself and loss of innocence. In one of the opening scenes we see uncle Jack reading from the Jungle book, a scene where Mowgli has reached manhood and must now leave the family of wolves that raised him. Throughout the film we are subtly reminded of the frailty of our human condition. The pyramids, the vastness of the desert, and ultimately the brutal reality of war. The use of George Bizet’s  “Pearl fishers”  in light of all this is simply magical. You can hear the general listening to this precise passage alone in his tent at night:

In Gallipoli we have a film of heightened beauty and human values.

One of Peter Weir’s masterpieces.

If you should chose only 5 or 10 films to watch in your life, this should be one of them.

RELEASED: August 1981

Director: Peter Weir

Running Time: 110 mn

Cast: Mel Gibson, Mark Lee

Rating: 4,5 stars

Brief Encounter

Adapted from Noel Coward’s play “Still Life”, directed by Alan Bridges and produced by Carlo Ponti, the 1974 film “Brief Encounter” is a small masterpiece, easily brushed under the carpet by all those who tend to believe that love stories should reflect glamour and heroism. On the contrary, this is a tale of uncomfortable passions and unspoken words.

Two strangers, both married, meet accidentally at a railway station, Burton who is a doctor, removes a particle of grid from Sophia Loren’s eye. They meet again by chance and become infatuated with each other. We sense on Burton’s side that he is taken by a passion that is beyond him, especially in the moment when Sophia Loren visibly falls for him and notices that he looks just like a little boy. In this moment she touches his heart unwillingly, most likely in a way that no-one has ever done before. She is in contemplation, in a much different state than he is, almost in a dream-like hypnotic state of mind. Through their short-lived encounters and conversations, they are taken to places they had forgotten about, places where dreams co-exist with reality.  Richard Burton is tempestuous in his passion (A trait he embodies gracefully as he did in “The Medusa Touch”) whereas Loren is frail, eerie, detached, almost as someone who stepped aside long ago, to become a mere observer of her own life. Burton acts as an inevitable trigger of her awakening, but on their first escapade together, there are irrefutable signs that this acquaintance under the sign of deceit is doomed to fail.  A road accident they witness on the countryside leaves a gloomy and bitter taste in the air.

Burton makes arrangements to meet in a friend’s apartment (They have nowhere else to go), but what happens there is nightmarish for both of them.  Burton’s friend, Steven, arrives home earlier than planned and we learn that Burton had not told Steven he would be bringing a friend over. Steven who is inebriated, comments on this, (not without a touch of sarcasm) and suspects that this is all just a fling with a nurse.  Loren sneaks out, humiliated, exposed, degraded, leaving behind her jacket and purse. Burton runs after her and finds her at the train station cafeteria, but now all that remains is an overwhelming feeling of shame, humiliation and sacrilege. The ultimate violation of a temple never conquered. Loren comments “It all seemed so innocent.. it was like a dream of love”

The final scenes are heartbreaking. Again a train rages through the station and acts as a powerful metaphor to all that is fleeting in our world and the very brief moments we have to make decisions that impact that rest of our lives.

RELEASED: November 1974

Director: Alan Bridges

Running Time: 74 mn

Cast: Sophia Loren, Richard Burton

Rating: 4 stars

The Gravity of Gravity

PLOT: Two astronauts stranded in space desperately try to survive before running out of oxygen.

I saw Gravity in a Brussels theater last week and this is the film that prompted me to finally start a blog, not because of any overwhelming feeling of appraise (on the contrary) but rather because of a sense of unease that settled slowly but firmly as I walked out of the theater. Let me explain:  Gravity is indeed a mark in film history. A “tour-de-force” in 90 minutes that takes us to unseen depths of space and manages to steadily keep audiences in the edge of their seats without the aid of Aliens or inter-galactical combat scenes but rather with a clever use of state of the art elegant filming and some mesmerizing 3D moments. This is the first feature film of Alfonso Cuarón in 7 years and a triumphant comeback, yes, but it lacks in something essential which I might define as silence and all that it entrails. The same silence we experience in Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, in Kubrick’s “2001” or in Tarkovsky’s “Solaris”, is more or less absent in this film, perhaps because Cuarón opted for a steady pace, to keep audiences wired and receptive.  The film is a clinically constructed story with a good pace where everything fits and nothing is exaggerated, but by doing so, the real menace of deep space, the real mystery of the unknown, is lost, in spite of the fact that we do come to “feel space” as we have not felt before in cinema, we do not feel the utter isolation and fear that should have been present as it would have been, had the movie been shot by Stanley Kubrick.

Am I asking too much? Perhaps, but then I should also add that the film aims higher than it actually reaches, and perhaps this is why my hopes of a small glimpse of Genius were shattered early on.

I do appreciate however the choice of actors, people of substance, not young and unknown actors.

Gravity carries its torch very high, in that it marks a new era in cinema. The film ended with applauses in the theater followed by a triumphant music, and as I walked out of the theater and into the street, my only thoughts were of escaping gravity and getting myself a good Gauffre on the Toison d’or.

RELEASED: October 2013

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Running Time: 91 mn

Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

Rating: 3 stars