‘Hacksaw Ridge,’ Mel Gibson: Ovation For True WWII Story Of Medal Of Honor Hero Desmond Doss
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge film received a 10-minute standing ovation at the 73rd International Venice Film Festival for the story created of the World War II conscientious objector who would not go to war to kill men, but went instead with a devout sense of purpose and saved 75 lives in the midst of a barrage of “steel rain” and the hellfire of weapons’ noise during the Battle of Okinawa.
While the actual information can be found on the Congressional Medal of Honor posting regarding the brave deeds of Private First Class Desmond Doss on a jagged escarpment 400 feet high called “Hacksaw Ridge,” it morphs into a whole new epic parable of truth about one man’s strong faith and steadfast purpose in time of war with Gibson watching over the ensemble and the telling.
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge” movie, from the trailer, reveals that Pvt. Doss served as a medic because he would not pick up a gun to kill people.
“With the whole world so set on tearing itself apart, don’t seem like such a bad thing for me to want to put a little bit of it back together.”
The trailer appears on YouTube.
With the 1st Battalion soldiers gaining the summit, they were hit with “a heavy concentration of artillery, mortar and machine-gun fire,” per the facts from the CMOH page.
“Pfc. Doss refused to seek cover and remained in the fire-swept area with the many stricken, carrying them 1 by 1 to the edge of the escarpment and there lowering them on a rope-supported litter down the face of a cliff to friendly hands.”
Over and over again, Pvt. Doss went out to rescue wounded men, per the details, and once it meant dodging heavy rifle and mortar fire for up to 200 yards “forward of the lines on the same escarpment.”
Describing the standing ovation in Venice, Nancy Tartaglione, a writer over at the website Deadline, described the scene.
“The film played to a roughly 10-minute standing ovation — long standing-Os are not as common a happenstance on the Lido as they are at some other festivals. At about six minutes into the ovation, Gibson and the actors were asked to go down into the audience.”
Mel Gibson talks #HacksawRidge and “survival” in Hollywood https://t.co/tF8SGoenKW pic.twitter.com/RmFshNEUyo
— Variety (@Variety) September 6, 2016
And this one about the combat scenes.
The battle scenes in #HacksawRidge make the opening scene in “Saving Private Ryan” look like a Noel Coward play.
— Mick LaSalle (@MickLaSalle) September 4, 2016
And then there was this other one from August.
One of the bravest men on the WWII battlefield never even touched a weapon. #HacksawRidge – In theaters November 4. pic.twitter.com/Y5abDrFG0e
— Hacksaw Ridge (@hacksawridge) August 31, 2016
Elsewhere on the planet, the film is being hailed as “a brutally effective, bristlingly idiosyncratic combat saga” by critics such as Owen Gleiberman over at Variety, while Andrew Pulver writes that it is “a sometimes gruesome study of Doss’ time in the military during the second world war” in his interview of Gibson and reaction of the movie for the Guardian.
He quoted Gibson as saying that it is “undeniable what the essence of Doss was.” Gibson added that as a soldier in the midst of the battle, Pvt. Doss “was a man of great courage and strong conviction, and strong faith.”
“[T]o go into a battle zone like that – which the Japanese called it ‘steel rain’, with the artillery and lead flying around – to go into that armed with only your faith, your faith has to be strong in you. That’s an undeniable part of the story I found really inspiring.”
The film has apparently been a long time coming to audiences. Website IMDB explains that “Stan Jensen from the Seventh-day Adventist Church took this story to screenwriter/producer Gregory Crosby in the late 1990s.” Desmond Doss died in 2006, and while he did not live to see this movie, IMDB explains there was a documentary in 2004 based on the Medal of Honor subject, directed and produced by Terry Benedict, titled The Conscientious Objector.
Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge movie comes to theaters on November 4.
[Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP Images, File]
