Mel Gibson Ruins Everything: Or, a Review of ‘Hacksaw Ridge’
By: Ariana Aboulafia
My wife and I have a running joke about The Host, a sci-fi film that was released in 2013 based on a Stephanie Meyers novel by the same name. When we first started dating, it was one of her favorite books; and so, when it was released as a film, she insisted that we go to see it in theaters. Being that we were in the earliest, honeymoon-iest phases of our relationship, I agreed to see it despite the fact that it seemed absolutely absurd. And, absurd it was — it was positively one of the worst films that I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen Waterboy multiple times, as well as several other Adam Sandler movies, so I kind of consider myself to be a bit of an expert on bad movies). The film has a paltry 8% score on film review website “Rotten Tomatoes”, where the critics’ consensus notes that it is “mostly stale and tedious, with moments of unintentional hilarity.” Regardless of all of this, my wife said then — and still maintains, now — that the book, and the story, was actually good, despite how awful the film was.
I wouldn’t know. I’ve never read it. But, when I watched Hacksaw Ridge this week, I suddenly understood the particular type of disappointment that my wife must have felt all those years ago when we saw The Host — the sense of sadness, defeat, and even a little bit of anger that comes with watching a horrible visual version of something that you just know is a good story. Really though, I shouldn’t have been surprised that the film was an utter letdown; Hacksaw Ridge was, after all, directed by Mel Gibson, the reigning King of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.
Hacksaw Ridge is based on the true story of Pfc. Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector who nevertheless chose to enlist in WWII and serve as an Army medic. Because of his moral and religious convictions Doss refused to fire or even hold a gun during his entire deployment. Even more extraordinarily, Doss remained true to his beliefs despite the fact that he fought in the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific where over 14,000 Allied soldiers and over 77,000 Japanese soldiers were killed. Instead of taking life like everyone around him, Doss chose to save life; and, he singlehandedly rescued 75 men during the Battle of Okinawa, and survived himself as well. Because of his courage, Doss was eventually awarded the Medal of Honor, becoming the first conscientious objector to be rewarded for bravery on the battlefield. Clearly, Doss’s story is a remarkable one — but, even more than that, it is a story that seems to be hand-crafted for portrayal on the silver screen. After all, the story is inspirational and patriotic, is a relatable tale of good versus evil, and has just enough violence and action to keep people interested. On top of all of that, Doss’s relationship with his wife, a nurse named Dorothy, adds a healthy dose of romance into the mix as well; truly, Doss’s life tells such an extraordinary story that it would seem like anyone would be able to turn it into an amazing film.
Never fear, Mel Gibson is here, to prove you wrong and show you just how deftly he can muck things up with his unnecessarily overt religious symbolism and hidden-yet-obvious agenda!
Doss’s story is a religious, or at the very least a spiritual, one, and I went into this film understanding that. After all, it is largely Doss’s religious beliefs as a Seventh-Day Adventist that killing is a sin (even in times of war) that led him to refuse to take up arms and defend himself; it would make sense, then, that some discussion of Doss’s religion and the ways that it affected him would be included in Hacksaw Ridge. Those scenes of gently religious subtext — the ones where a young Doss stares at a wall hanging in his home of the Ten Commandments, where an older Doss (played by Andrew Garfield) asks his commanding officers (one of whom is perplexingly played by Vince Vaughn) to be allowed to rest from fighting on the Sabbath, where Dorothy (played by Teresa Palmer, who most recently starred in the thoroughly scary movie Lights Out) hands Doss a Bible before he leaves for his first day of boot camp — they don’t bother me. In fact, I enjoy them, because they make sense; they feel like they were included for a purpose, to tell Doss’s story as truthfully as possible, and I appreciate that.
My issue with Hacksaw Ridge is not the fact that it incorporates religion. Rather, it is the way that it portrays religion, and the way that Mel Gibson uses Doss’s story to push his beliefs rather than to showcase Doss’s beliefs on viewers that I have an issue with. In Gibson’s version of Doss’s life story, salvation is something that can only be achieved by those who adhere to a very particular brand of Christianity; if you do that, then even war cannot kill, hurt or even really scare you, and if you don’t, then you should prepare to be royally screwed, both in this life and in the afterlife. Despite a wonderful performance by Andrew Garfield, there are moments when Doss’s character comes across as insufferably preachy, which is not the way that Doss seemed to be in real life — or, at least, that’s not how he seems in the handful of clips at the end of the film that show actual interviews with an octogenarian Doss a year or so before his death. It wasn’t enough for Mel Gibson to direct a film where someone stands up for what they believe in, where someone is secure enough in himself and his religion to straddle the line between being open about the things that he feels are important and demanding that everyone else also think those things are important. It wasn’t enough for Gibson to tell Desmond Doss’s story and allow it to be about Desmond Doss, despite the fact that Doss’s story is so incredible in and of itself that it requires little directing. Gibson simply could not leave well enough alone; he just could not help himself from inserting his own religious beliefs and shoving them down viewers’ throats — and, in true Mel Gibson fashion, he wasn’t even subtle about it!
Gibson’s overwhelming religious “subtext” (if you can call it that) in Hacksaw Ridge comes to a head in two particular scenes that come one right after another and actually follow some of the best parts of the film, as if Gibson had suddenly realized that he had spent far too long talking about other things and immediately had to squeeze as much overtly Christian imagery as he possibly could into a mere few moments of film. The scenes that precede Gibson’s absurdly religions ones focus on what is perhaps the most unbelievable part of Desmond Doss’s story: the fact that he was willing to stay behind after an incredibly bloody battle (wherein his infantry was attempting to secure Hacksaw Ridge, hence the title of the film) and singlehandedly rescue injured men, putting himself in grave danger that was only magnified by the fact that he refused to carry a gun for protection. Eventually — after Doss had rescued 75 people — Doss’s clandestine operations drew the attention of Japanese soldiers, who fired at Doss without mercy until he escaped over the edge of Hacksaw Ridge and wound up back on the ground, surrounded by American soldiers once again. The scenes showing Doss rescuing his fellow soldiers are intense, and keep viewers at the edge of their seats as he saves each person, one at a time, sending them down to safety and then running back into danger as he asks God, each time, to help him save just one more person. More than anything, these scenes serve to humanize Doss’s character, who had come across as a holier-than-thou ideologue more than once earlier in the film — viewers are able to see, here, a man who was horrified by the carnage in front of him, who was afraid for his life and yet chose to do what he felt was right anyway. In these scenes, Doss comes across as more relatable and likable than in any other scene before them, and in doing so serves as a shining example for viewers. After all, if Doss can do what he did, then so can you, or I, or anyone else who simply chooses to do so, right?
Just when I was beginning to truly enjoy Hacksaw Ridge, to appreciate the delicate house of cards that had been built to comprise Doss’s multilayered story, Mel Gibson inserted himself into the picture and changed my mind immediately. And, as Mel Gibson is wont to do, he was not content at that point to simply knock down the cards that he had seemingly spent two-thirds of a film building up — he felt the need to light the cards on fire, then bury their ashes, and then piss on the dirt where he buried those ashes for good measure. And, that’s exactly what he does here in one-and-a-half short scenes by instantly dehumanizing Doss and elevating him from man to Messiah.
First, when Doss is using rope to lower himself down from the top of the ridge back onto the ground, Gibson decided to show him suspended in midair with his arms splayed out exactly like — you guessed it — Jesus on the cross. This scene is so eye-rollingly obvious, so out of place particularly in the context of the scenes preceding it that it comes across as almost ridiculous. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, immediately upon arriving back to the ground from the top of Hacksaw Ridge, Doss is instructed to get cleaned up and then rest by a commanding officer, which makes sense considering he has just stayed up all night on little more than adrenaline and prayer. Doss’s shower scene though, of course, had to be turned into another explicitly Christian display — in it, Gibson shows Doss showering, the blood of all of the people that he saved pouring off of his body as water is continually dumped on top of his head. Even the most religiously illiterate, of course, can see what Gibson was trying to do here: show Doss in a baptism of sorts, where he is using his religion to wash away the sins of war. And, okay, fine. The scene is too overt for me, but I could have let it go had it not come on the heels of the most ridiculous scene in the entire film. But the thing is, it did.
The best thing about Doss’s story is that it’s real, and it shows the enormous potential that people have to do good, and it fills viewers with the hope that good people do exist and that Doss is proof of that. Doss’s story, told in the right way, had the potential to inspire people to hold themselves to the same standard that he held himself to, not just in terms of staying true to one’s beliefs but also in terms of doing whatever you can to help others. But, by equating Doss with Jesus, Gibson completely throws all of that out the window — after all, no one equates themselves to Jesus, or expects their own actions to mirror those of Jesus, and if Desmond Doss is being portrayed as Christ (or, at the very least, as a Christ-like figure) then that gives viewers a built-in excuse to walk away from Hacksaw Ridge without the slightest intention to change their own lives or ways of acting. Furthermore, by making his choices of religious imagery so shockingly obvious, Gibson isolates any viewers who are not Christian and yet still could have taken an immensely positive message away from watching the film. Then again, though, Gibson has never shown himself to really care about isolating people.
Anyone who has ever heard of Mel Gibson knows and understands that he has an agenda when it comes to his filmmaking; I mean, I was ten years old when Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was released, and even then I remember reading about the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who found the film offensive because Gibson seemed incapable of producing a movie about Christianity without turning Jews into the enemy. Hacksaw Ridge is certainly less overt about its Christian themes than The Passion was, and overtly less anti-Semitic as well, but that’s not really saying much — it’s kind of like saying that Fifty Shades of Grey is less overtly sexual and graphic than a pornography. And, while Gibson doesn’t turn Jews into the enemy in Hacksaw Ridge per se (there was, after all, a built-in enemy already to this story, and that was the Japanese) he still manages to use religion as a tool to alienate any viewer that perhaps is not a Christian, or does not believe in God, or does not fit into “the good guy” in this or any other way. This usage of religion is most apparent in the above scenes, where Gibson portrays Doss as Christ. By doing this, Gibson sends the message that Doss is the “good guy” of the film in the same way that Jesus is the “good guy” of life — and, those who did not believe in Doss are in some ways also the “bad guys” of the film (they are less obvious villains than the Japanese soldiers, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t villains), just as those who do not believe in Jesus are “bad guys” as well. In this same vein, every single main character in Hacksaw Ridge are white males, except for Dorothy and Bertha Doss, Desmond’s mother, who are white females; I can’t even remember seeing any black character speak during the entire film. And, while this may seem to have been done solely for the purposes of historical accuracy, the fact of the matter is that there were over 2,000 black Marines that fought in the Battle of Okinawa, not even including the hundreds or thousands of black men that fought in other branches of the military. There was no reason that Gibson could not have included a few black characters, even to play smaller roles as soldiers fighting alongside Doss — he did not do so simply because he did not want to, because people of color do not fit into his perfect view of “the good guys”, American war, patriotism, and Christianity.
Hacksaw Ridge isn’t all bad; as previously mentioned, Garfield gives a wonderful performance worthy of his Best Actor Oscar nomination, and there are a handful of decent action and battle scenes throughout the film as well. It is not that it is absolutely impossible to find anything redeeming about the film, but the films flaws — that are largely if not solely the fault of Mel Gibson — overshadow even the most positive aspects of Doss’s story, which is sad because his story is so wonderful. I was thrilled when I remembered, after viewing Hacksaw Ridge, that it lost the Best Picture Oscar to Moonlight, because if anything is the absolute antithesis to a hyper-masculine film about American patriotism and Christianity, it’s a film about gay men living in Liberty City starring a black Muslim. Not even La La Land (whose director, Damien Chazelle, beat out Gibson for last year’s Best Director Oscar) made my eyes roll quite as far back into my head as Hacksaw Ridge did — when a modern-day musical that shows its characters dancing all over Los Angeles, from the middle of the freeway to the Griffith Observatory, is less cheesy than what should have been a touching tribute to one man’s incredible sacrifice in a time of war, you know something has gone horribly awry.
Make no mistake, I have a massive amount of respect for Doss and what he did for his fellow man and for our country. My own grandfather fought in the Pacific during WWII, in the Air Force, and while I know that I will never be able to fully understand the horrors that he saw there or the things that he sacrificed, like Doss and so many others did, in the name of freedom, that doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate them. In fact, I think it’s Gibson who doesn’t appreciate them, or Doss — and, it is his lack of appreciation and respect for Doss that allowed him to, seemingly without conscience, appropriate Doss’s story and use it to further his own religious agenda. Unfortunately for Desmond Doss (and for millions of viewers of Hacksaw Ridge) Gibson simply cares more about himself than he does about anyone else, including those whose stories he tells — and, if that isn’t a reason to pass on Hacksaw Ridge, then I’m not sure what is.
Perhaps this time I’ll take my wife’s advice, and try reading the book that Hacksaw Ridge was based on instead. After all, it really is such a good story.
Ariana Aboulafia is a writer and an alumna of the University of Southern California with a BA political science. She really just thinks that you should watch Saving Private Ryan tonight instead. Follow her on Medium here, or on Twitter here.
