The movie Mel Gibson said operates on a “whole other level”
It’s always seemed like Mel Gibson has had a preoccupation with the past, having provided several contributions to historical cinema over the years. As far back as 1981’s Gallipoli, the World War I drama directed by Peter Weir, Gibson had been exploring the most significant historical events in human history.
By the time 1995 swung around, Gibson had dived into medieval history with his epic Braveheart before going to explore 16th-century Mesoamerica in Apocalypto. The story of Jesus Christ was then examined in The Passion of the Christ, and Gibson also turned his attention to World War II in Hacksaw Ridge.
The Vietnam War could not hide from Gibson either, and in 2002, he starred in Randall Wallace’s war film We Were Soldiers. The Vietnam War has proven to be a widespread inspiration for cinema and has resulted in several brilliant movies, including Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket and Oliver Stone’s Platoon.
We Were Soldiers, based on a 1992 book by Lieutenant General Hal Moore and reporter Joseph L. Galloway, was another decent effort in the Vietnam War movie genre, providing a dramatised version of the Battle of Ia Drang in 1965. Gibson was drawn to the film because he found it a “very compelling story”.
“They were ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, and what we’re doing, I think, is making a living monument, like a moving monument on film to these guys,” the actor once told the BBC. Gibson had also been asked what his favourite Vietnam War movie was, and he stated a true classic of the genre starring Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken.
Of Michael Cimino’s 1978 film The Deer Hunter, Gibson said, “I thought that was cool. But that was a whole other thing, that was a whole other level.” Cimino’s work focuses on three Vietnam War veterans who return home from the conflict only to find difficulties in adapting back to normal civilian life, particularly Robert De Niro’s character, who experiences a descent into mental unwellness.
The Deer Hunter differs somewhat from usual Vietnam War movies in that it deals with the consequences of combat rather than exploring it first-hand, although there are scenes in which the trauma of Vietnam is detailed in the present moment. That’s likely why Gibson found it to be operating on “another level”.
In the same interview, Gibson opened up on how Vietnam War movies often get the wrong side of the battle, according to Lieutenant Moore. “Moore said Hollywood got it wrong every time, sharpening their twisted political knives on the bones of our dead brothers, and that wasn’t the war they fought,” the actor said. “Usually war films about the Vietnam conflict focus on the very negative aspect of it, drug use, and all that kind of stuff.”
The likes of Platoon and Apocalypse Now had indeed focused on the spectacle of war, whereas Gibson felt that We Were Soldiers had managed to provide an “impartial” look at the Vietnam conflict from both sides. “The film doesn’t only focus on the American point of view. It looks at it from the North Vietnamese point of view as well,” he noted, “there’s kind of a compassion and an understanding of both sides and what they’re both doing.”
Still, it seems as though even the impartially of We Were Soldiers could not undo the brilliance of The Deer Hunter in the eyes of Gibson. The film won five Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’ for Cimino and ‘Best Supporting Actor’ for Walken. Check out the trailer for The Deer Hunter below.
