How to go to war and not lose your mind? Is it even possible? Mel Gibson thinks it's possible. Really, you need faith. Well, if you don’t have it, it's not a problem. Gibson's gonna borrow a little of his.
Common sense is all over the place. There's nowhere to hide from it: even the petty idiotic situations that happen to hundreds of us every single day do not affect the picture at all. Shrugging, cursing and going about our business — their importance is dictated by crystal clear common sense. Our minds cannot be broken. We feel invulnerable — and this loss of vigilance can be costly.
Because it's actually very easy to go crazy. Imagine you're claustrophobic who somehow got caught in a vent shaft and got stuck in it. Neither forward nor backward. You are screaming, and nobody hears you. You’ll die, but you’ll go crazy before that. And here's another example. A well-established, reasonable citizen goes to work in the morning. He's in a good mood, but why not? He is successful, everything is stable and predictable… but suddenly sounds a siren, drone the planes, shells are exploding, and the once calm, familiar from childhood street turns into a bloody mess. Well, will our successful citizen keep his cool mind?
The crazy Mr. Gibson
Hell no, under these circumstances, even the toughest ones will lose their minds, right? Nothing to guess, though, let's ask someone who knows firsthand about madness. Mel «Lethal Weapon» Gibson.
Mr. Gibson has lost his mind in his old age. He became completely insane. We should have seen this coming, of course, because it all started with those ancient typical roles. Max Rockatansky or Martin Riggs… that's a real choice, isn't it? Then suddenly, he started reading women's thoughts. And in the last few years he fell into a real acting marasmus, starring in «Machete Kills» and «Expendables 3» — both roles were pretty alike, both idiotic.
But he always played ten out of ten, right? He gave us everything. And no matter what, Gibson always remained an icon for us, even if total psycho. The name only in the credits was enough to take the audience by storm. Yes, he's strange; he's clearly got mad on religious grounds, and he sees a global Jewish conspiracy around him. Perhaps not the type of guy you'd like to have as a neighbor. But for that charming smile, you can forgive everything.
And what movies he made! Every film is a diamond, though not always cut. «The Man Without a Face», «Braveheart» (we're serious now), «Apocalypto». Well, and «The Passion of the Christ», of course. That was a real cultural sensation! The whole world was crazy. For some it was so amazing, that they just cry and required a canonization of Mr. Gibson; others were preparing for the second coming, waiting to hear the direct question «Who took this?» from you know whom; others just offered to crucify the director himself just in case, of harm’s away.
What about him? Well, after the release of «The Passion of the Christ» in one of his interviews, Gibson admitted that it happens that he received signs. Or omens. And he added that all Catholics can relate. As for the Catholics themselves, he told them that the film was shot by the Holy Spirit. That was in 2004, friends and neighbors. Did anyone care to ensure that Mr. Gibson, after such words, was isolated from society in a remote institution, where there were soft walls and grates on the windows? No.
The ingenious Mr. Gibson
And thank god. Because no one know what would have happened to Mel Gibson in that case. Maybe he’d get a haircut, became a monk and quit directing forever. Which means we’d never see the movie “Hacksaw Ridge”. And we would have lost a lot.
Mr. Gibson is sly as a fox. He's not a boy and has a good idea of what movies make money. For example, the tap «Based on a true story» can add to the box office of the film another ten million dollars. And if this tap comes with war drama, the potential success flies over the clouds. So, you need to find a appropriate episode that took place in a huge military story (preferably of the United States).
Gibson and his writing crew, Andrew Knight and Robert Schenkkan, find this episode. The hero is a guy named Desmond Doss — a soldier who took part in the Battle of Okinawa. A patriot from head to toe. But there is one thing: Doss, for religious reasons, does not want to take up arms, and this fact immediately puts «Hacksaw Ridge» on the shelf with the description «Hundred billion films about the struggle of a loner against the system”. Jesus Christ, that’s what this is all about? Who would ever believe that Gibson was so cheap!
But no, that's right. The first hour of the film looks like a collection of all the war dramas that the American film industry has produced in the past 30 years. Some characters of the second and third plans can be easily put into any other film about the Americans in World War II — and no one will notice anything. The skills of some actors just patch up the holes in the script.
For example, Hugo Weaving is a real gem. Well, there's nothing new: this one has the capacity to make any movie better, which he's been doing for the last twenty years. And not even as the main role.
And here's the lead actor surprise: Andrew Garfield. Yeah, we've known him for a long time, and there will be nothing new in the first hour of the movie. Quite a familiar picture in which the always young Peter Parker is trying hard to be the nicest guy in the world — and very unsuccessful. We look at this village idyll and we slowly relax. Seems like Gibson have become a regular sentimental old guy with age. Well, we probably need such movies too: a boring biopic with good actors about fighting the system and so on…
The cleansing Mr. Gibson
Get down! Get down! For God's sake, get down! Bury yourself in the ground, hide, disappear! So that no one will even think that someone is still alive here. Shrink your eyes, count to thousand, and then look out carefully.
The idyll is gone. There's nothing else but smoke and stench from burned human bodies. And Mel Gibson with young Mr. Garfield are standing in the middle of it, both have gray hair and burned faces. We're look down shocked — there are open abdomens with smoked entrails. Gibson and Garfield reach out to us their shredded hands — not for help, just to say, that it's okay. It’s war. This is war.
We have grown to our chairs — five minutes ago it was quite cozy, but now it feels like an electric chair. The chair won't release us, it's on Mel Gibson's side. All we have to do is to survive what’s prepared for us. To do that, we have to find faith, otherwise there will be nothing but death.
We're trying to fight, but we can't. Gibson preaches thou shalt not kill, don't even think about it. It's not a test of faith, it is its very essence, its purpose. Faith is the only thing that will draw us out of this hell.
It's hard for us to breathe. We unbutton the top of the tunic, and underneath them are chains. Gibson looks at us with no compassion. He waits for us to understand.
And we get it. Redemption by the mad Mel Gibson works very effectively. The fire of war burns out everything inside, both good and bad. Now we're clean. Now we're ready to start over — with Mr. Gibson as the leading god. A hard and not too fair god, but no choice.
In the last two and a half hours something has changed about us. No, we didn't start to hate the war more – the changes are on the other hand. Can you now better understand those who in all circumstances are guided by the faith rather than logic? That’s sounds more like the truth now. We always looked down on them — it seemed to us that they did not understand something in this life. But no. Turns out it was all about us.