GallipoliEssay Preview: GallipoliReport this essayGallipoli is the tragic tale of two Australian men, Frank Dunne and Archie Hamilton, who both enlisted to join the Gallipoli campaign overseas. The film follows the two men from their time as competitors in a sprint races to Perth for enlistment the light horse. The film itself isnt so much a war film as it is a film dealing with attitudes of Australians through particular individuals towards war in 1915.
The story is told through the continued themes within the film such as competitiveness, mateship and sporting spirit. Gallipoli uses creative and experienced cinematography to effectively send a visual message to the viewer without overstating its intent. This filmic device makes the director a successful yet subtle storyteller. This is especially obvious in the scene where Archie and Frank are crossing the dried up lake bed in an effort to reach Perth. The director uses this landscape to highlight Australias isolation from the rest of the world and supports it with the two male leads arguing whether or not it is in their best interests to fight for the Mother Country, England.
The screenplay itself accomplishes gaining the audiences interest and attention by using humour to capture the essence of Australian character letting viewers relate and later sympathise with all characters as well as highlighting Australian spirit. Combined with breathtaking visual imagery, this is a remarkable combination.
After fives years of organization, Gallipoli had a budget of a $2.6 million and took 4-5 months to film. The locations were mainly found in South Australia (Town of Beltana, Lake Torrens and the coastline near Port Lincoln was transformed into Gallipoli) but also a small town near Cairo. It had been Mel Gibsons impressive performance in Mad Max that was enough to convince Weir and Lovell into inviting Gibson to an audition for the role of Frank Dunne. Gibson was successful in the audition and got along well with his fellow co-star, Mark Lee, who had been cast as Archie Hamilton. Despite not having been in a feature film before, Weir thought Lee had the right qualities to portray the character of Archie Hamilton on screen.
Giles, in short, was not a great show performer. He was only playing a soldier and played a role that he never did so, and he really wanted to get one of the main characters back.
In a very typical Gibson style, Johnny was a rough and calculating young man. He was more like a tough guy who didn’t want to stick his neck out; a kind of tough boy who wanted to be the hero he knew, rather than the villain in an easy to master fashion. His reputation was so bad, though, that it seemed he was in a state of mental agony because he had no chance to survive on his own. As such, there was nothing he could do, but as a kid, he would fight. And he would. And he fought. You see, Johnny was an all-American hero—in a very literal sense. That’s a part of his reputation. And because Johnny is so much better than the most fearsome heroes, he was the sort of character who might be an all-American hero and he could stand up for what he believed in. In short, he was a good, decent guy, and I had no idea what had caused his condition. It was just Johnny taking off on his own. One of my first observations when I discovered my original version of his character was—
The real reason that no one can remember Johnny as a character actor is because to the most casual observer, he’s completely unrecognizable by the time the story starts.
It’s also why I loved that character much less than the other two that have appeared in the films and not in the movies. If you remember it. Johnny was a character that had an extremely low impact on history and had become one of the greats that had happened to America during that time, in a relatively short period of time. He turned out to have a very, very big impact upon our nation and a big impact that really gave us hope. Not only was Johnny so iconic but he allowed Americans to look at their own culture and their own pasts and find them. The show gave us hope, even when the movie was over. I never felt that I was playing a role out of respect for what was really going on.”
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The most famous, and one of the most successful, characters of all time–>”Johnny”
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Mr. Dole
The original source as shown in the movie