Gillipoli 2005
...anti-war presentation I have ever seen. It should be seen by every school student in every nation, world wide. It should play in war history museums and war memorials everywhere. I dare say that if it were screened to soldiers in military academies it would both chill them and make them proud. Like the actual experience of the Gallipoli participants, it is impossible to be unmoved by the stories this film tells.
The film is unique in that it brings the ongoing personal records of participants from all sides of the conflict in a deeply humane and respectful manner. A six-year effort in the making, the photographs, diaries and letters of three Australians, two Britons, three New Zealanders and two Turkish soldiers are presented from the beginning of the campaign to its end. Interspersed with commentaries by war historians and re-enactments of shell-fire battles, trench-warfare and beach onslaughts, there is a wealth of grainy, black and white archival footage of the landings and the troops on both the Allies’ and the Turkish side. Records of rising casualties punctuate each failed engagement. It is a chronological narrative that feels relentless, bringing home the utter futility of this campaign and disgust at the high-minded, willful blindness of politicians and generals who ordered it despite wide-spread advice to the contrary.
Gallipoli was the highest grossing film in Turkish history and was the number one film in Turkey for five weeks when it was released there on March 18th 2005, on the 90th anniversary of the Campaign. While the re-enactments, shot in black and white, and the archival footage are not extraordinary for a war documentary, the dual-sided view of the action is. Above all, we are privileged to be read the letters of men whom we can see changing through the course of the 10-month conflict. These letters, to wives, sisters and parents are...
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