Gallipoli

1915. Two romantically inclined young men enlist in the Australian Armed Forces. After a crash-course training in a boot camp lost among the sands near the ancient Egyptian pyramids, the friends are assigned to a regiment fighting the Turkish army. They don’t yet know that they’re about to take part in the Battle of Gallipoli — one of the bloodiest confrontations of the First World War.

Peter Weir tells a story of friendship with calm and restraint: for much of the film, we don’t see valiant combat, but rather the peaceful, almost mundane life of the boys behind the lines. Which makes it all the more horrifying to realize that pompous aristocratic generals see these young, life-untested volunteers as nothing more than cannon fodder.