The funny thing about the “Mel Gibson scandal,” so-called, is that it occurred before the internet reaches full maximum outrage, or perhaps mass hysteria is a better way to put what happens now daily, hourly, on the internet where everyone begins to look like the enemy if enough fingers point in his or her direction. It is no different in its absurdity and hysteria than the Salem witch trials. Humans have not evolved out of that particular adaptation. Thus, we should all brace ourselves for a new wave of hysteria to crop up vis a vis Hacksaw Ridge, even if it’s great. Can Gibson be forgiven/redeemed?
Either way, here is what Variety’s Owen Gleiberman had to say about it out of Venice:
[quotes quotes_style=”bquotes” quotes_pos=”center”]Mel Gibson has made a move about a pacifist who served nobly during WWII. It’s a testament to his filmmaking chops, and also an act of atonement that may succeed in bringing Gibson back.
Mel Gibson’s “Hacksaw Ridge,” which premiered today at the 73rd International Venice Film Festival, is a brutally effective, bristlingly idiosyncratic combat saga — the true story of a man of peace caught up in the inferno of the Second World War. It’s the first movie Gibson has directed since “Apocalypto,” 10 years ago (a film he’d already shot before the scandals that engulfed him), and this November, when it opens and has a good chance to become a player during awards season, it will likely prove the first film in a decade that marks his re-entry into the heart of the industry. Yet to say that “Hacksaw Ridge” finally leaves the Gibson scandals behind isn’t quite right; it has been made in their shadow. On some not-so-hard-to-read level, the film is conceived and presented as an act of atonement.[/quotes]
What was the controversy again? Oh, right:
[quotes quotes_style=”bquotes” quotes_pos=”center”]It should be obvious by now that the question of whether we can separate a popular actor or filmmaker’s off-screen life from his on-screen art doesn’t have a one-size-fits-all answer. Every instance is different. In the case of Mel Gibson, what we saw a number of years ago — first in his anti-Semitic comments, then in leaked recordings of his phone conversations — wasn’t simply “objectionable” thoughts, but a rage that suggested he had a temperament of emotional violence, one that reverberated throughout his two most prominent films as a director: “The Passion of the Christ,” a sensational and, in many quarters, unfairly disdained religious psychodrama that was a serious attempt to grapple with the stakes of Christ’s sacrifice; and “Apocalypto,” a fanciful but mesmerizing Mayan adventure steeped to the bone in the ambiguous allure of violence.[/quotes]
Gleiberman goes on to write:
[quotes quotes_style=”bquotes” quotes_pos=”center”]There really was a Desmond Doss, and the film sticks close to the facts of his story. Yet there’s still something overtly programmatic about “Hacksaw Ridge.” It’s a movie that asks its audience to immerse itself in the violent madness of war and, at the same time, it roots its drama in the impeccable valor of a man who, by his own grace, refuses to have anything to do with violence. You could argue that Gibson, as a filmmaker, is having his bloody cake and eating it too — but the less cynical (and more accurate) way to put it might be that “Hacksaw Ridge” is a ritual of renunciation. The film stands on its own (if you’d never heard of Mel Gibson, it would work just fine), yet there’s no point in denying that it also works on the level of Gibsonian optics — that it speaks, on some spiritual-metaphorical level, to the troubles that have defined him and that he’s now making a bid to transcend.[/quotes]
Andrew Pulver at the Guardian has this to say:
[quotes quotes_style=”bquotes” quotes_pos=”center”]That, presumably, is how Gibson see his own journey, which began its descent after the volley of abuse he aimed at cops in 2006 after being stopped for drink driving. That year saw the release of Apocalypto, his Mayan-language thriller; it’s taken him a decade of public humiliation, frequent apologies, and occasional forays as an actor, to get to the position where he can release another film he’s directed. And as repellent a figure as many may still find Gibson, I have to report he’s absolutely hit Hacksaw Ridge out of the park.[/quotes]
