Peter Weir directed Master and Commander The Far Side of the World, the only film in the history of friendly fire to get a perfect 10 nose stitches from all three hosts when we rated the film.

He is therefore one of the giants of the genre.

But way before his masterpiece slash second to last movie,

Peter Weir made a name for himself as one of the leaders of the Australian New Wave,

a movement that saw the cinema of Australia surge in popularity among international audiences.

If you've seen films like Walk About, Mad Max, or

Crocodile Dundee, you've seen some Australian New Wave, which banned the

late 70s up until the end of the 80s. Today's film is from right in the middle of that movement

and was a big part of how Peter Weir was able to get jobs

directing big American and international productions

later in his career.

Gallipoli is a war that takes its sweet time

getting to the war. It's a film about a pair of talented foot racers that is not in a

particular hurry to tell how they went from being a couple of

country bumpkins to enlisted men in the light horse a division of the Anzac

troops being mustard in Australia sent to Cairo for training and then on to Turkey,

where they serve as cannon fodder to take some of the heat off of the British troops that are trying

to take control of the Dardanels from the Ottomans amidst some of the bloodiest fighting of World War I.

The Gallipoli campaign was a hugely important aspect of the First World War, having accounted for a quarter million casualties on both sides,

it was a great victory for the Ottomans and a devastating defeat for the Entente generally and Winston Churchill personally.

There's a big story to be told about how and why this campaign happened, but that's not

the perspective of this film. Rather, this film is doggedly interested in what motivates young men

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