Gallipoli

Many will remember Peter Weir's 1981 feature film Gallipoli (starring Mel Gibson), an anguished remembrance of Australian lives lost in the disastrous WWI Allied campaign to seize control of the Dardanelles by overrunning the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. This identically-named and equally powerful documentary from Turkish writer-director Tolga Ornek takes a more comprehensive view of the battle, which was fought in hopes of opening a supply route to Russia from the Mediterranean. Presenting a meticulous reconstruction, the film combines archival footage and photos, maps, and dramatic reenactments, together with detailed narration by actors Jeremy Irons and Sam Neill, to outline the overall strategy and various tactical realities. But what makes the documentary so powerful is a number of excerpts from letters written by men on the frontlines, which capture the enormity of the human cost of the nine-month struggle—conveying not only the horrors of war but also the nobility and courage of ordinary soldiers on both sides. What emerges is an evocative and poignant portrait of a military operation that was bungled in both planning and execution—one that temporarily derailed the career of one important politician (Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty) and made the career of another (Mustafa Kemal, the little-known commander who repelled the Allied advance and later, as Kemal Ataturk, transformed Turkey into a secular republic). An excellent documentary, this is highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)