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And on those bloody beaches, the first of them fell
I saw the first half of Gallipoli tonight. I had office hours; I had to leave after the ball at Cairo. All bets are off until I see the rest. But I was thinking as I walked out that up to this point the film had been much less a traditional war movie than a picaresque adventure, and how that was not inappropriate. Because young men did join up for the greatest game of them all as though it were a race-meet or another chance to impress the girls, and larked around foreign places and lied about their ages and played at war-drills and hit the beaches and died. And that was all.
I will have to reserve judgment until I've seen the rest of the film, I know. It could still tank in the second half. But in some sense, it doesn't matter. You know how it will end when the title comes up. And how, in that hell that they called Suvla Bay, we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter. No one can outrun bullets. But they don't know that, those laughing boys. Even the cynical, practical ones, they don't know how bad it will be. And we who have history on our side, who know what Oedipus is going to find out in the last act, and what will happen when Agamemnon comes home, all we can do is watch. It's a trope; it's a storyteller's trick. Even so.
I hope no one still signs up for the military that way—believing the newspapers, thinking dulce et decorum est. I'm not that much of an optimist.
I will have to reserve judgment until I've seen the rest of the film, I know. It could still tank in the second half. But in some sense, it doesn't matter. You know how it will end when the title comes up. And how, in that hell that they called Suvla Bay, we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter. No one can outrun bullets. But they don't know that, those laughing boys. Even the cynical, practical ones, they don't know how bad it will be. And we who have history on our side, who know what Oedipus is going to find out in the last act, and what will happen when Agamemnon comes home, all we can do is watch. It's a trope; it's a storyteller's trick. Even so.
I hope no one still signs up for the military that way—believing the newspapers, thinking dulce et decorum est. I'm not that much of an optimist.
no subject
I am reminded irresistibly of the fourth season of Blackadder, which is set in the trenches of World War I, and the following exchange between the brainlessly idealistic George (Hugh Laurie) and the lethally cynical Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson):
"You know, that's the thing I don't really understand about you, Cap. You're a professional soldier, and yet sometimes you sound as though you bally well haven't enjoyed soldiering at all."
"Well, you see, George, I did like it, back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns—even spears made us think twice. The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass."
"Now, come off it, sir! What about Mboto Gorge, for heaven's sake?"
"Yes, that was a bit of a nasty one—ten thousand Watusi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves. After the battle, instead of taking prisoners, we simply made a huge fruit salad . . . No, when I joined up, I never imagined anything as awful as this war. I'd had fifteen years of military experience perfecting the art of ordering a pink gin and saying 'Do you do it doggy-doggy?' in Swahili, and then suddenly four and a half million heavily armed Germans hove into view. That was a shock, I can tell you."