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When The War Is Over Season 1 Episode 1
Five Minute Recap brings you quick 5-minute summaries of the latest news, movies, tech, and trends. Stay informed and entertained in minutes with clear, engaging recap perfect for busy people who want to learn fast and keep up with the world.
#FiveMinuteRecap #Recap #QuickNews #DailyUpdate #LearnFast
Five Minute Recap brings you quick 5-minute summaries of the latest news, movies, tech, and trends. Stay informed and entertained in minutes with clear, engaging recap perfect for busy people who want to learn fast and keep up with the world.
#FiveMinuteRecap #Recap #QuickNews #DailyUpdate #LearnFast
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Short filmTranscript
00:07It's the biggest game on the nation's most respected day, Anzac Day at the MCG for the
00:1230th time.
00:17The crowd at this annual Anzac Day Clash at the G make this the single biggest commemorative
00:23event in the country.
00:31The intention of this match is to honour the spirit of the Anzacs, first forged at Gallipoli
00:38during World War One.
00:44I'm a Geelong supporter, so this is my first time at this game held every year between arch
00:50rivals Essendon and Collingwood.
01:02What else but reverence for the Anzacs could silence almost 100,000 fanatic or footy fans?
01:10And what could an iconic Aussie film have to do with it?
01:21I'm Rachel Griffiths, and I believe that when it comes to understanding war, art is our
01:29secret weapon.
01:32So in this series, I'm putting this theory to the test, one war and one artwork at a time.
01:41Because while journalists tell us what happened.
01:44They left in scenes that are now part of television's history.
01:47It's our performance.
01:49When the song was released, it was banned.
01:51Yeah.
01:53Filmmakers.
01:54Peter Weir for Cliff.
01:56Writers.
01:57The narrow road to the deep north.
01:59Artists.
02:00I was the only one not carrying a weapon.
02:02And musicians.
02:03If it's too risky to say, sing it.
02:07Who help us make sense of it.
02:10Holy shit.
02:11This is incredible.
02:16Art's not just there to be pretty and admired.
02:19Art is the magnifying glass and the mirror.
02:22This was a pub rock song that changed our lives.
02:24That's what art can do.
02:27This is when the war is over.
02:40I have never been to this place before, but it's so strange because I really feel like
02:45I have.
02:46And a lot of it is because of a film I saw when I was barely a teen.
02:52Gallipoli.
02:53How fast can you run?
02:54As fast as a leopard.
02:55How fast are you going to run?
02:57As fast as a leopard.
02:58Then let's see you do it.
03:00The film tells the origin story of the Anzacs.
03:04The disastrous campaign that took place right here along this peninsula during World War I.
03:11It was one of our first Australian blockbusters and heralded a golden age of Aussie cinema.
03:18Let's wait.
03:19Let's wait.
03:20Now the filmmakers set out to explore the futility of war.
03:25But once it hit our screens, it took on a life of its own.
03:30And had an impact that not even the filmmakers themselves could ever have imagined.
03:38Please use both doors, ladies and gentlemen.
03:40Have your tickets ready.
03:41The Australian feature film Gallipoli has been widely acclaimed by critics.
03:45We're talking about a film which is probably, I would consider the best film to come out of Australia.
03:51Gallipoli has been a tremendous success here in New York.
03:54We broke house records this week and we had lines around the block.
03:58It was celebrated around the world and it won eight AFI awards in 1981.
04:07Gallipoli.
04:07Gallipoli.
04:08Gallipoli.
04:09David Williamson for Gallipoli.
04:11Peter Weir for Gallipoli.
04:14It was part of that definition of us as a nation.
04:24Gallipoli was a huge hit with young Australians because it was a war film they could recognise themselves in.
04:31People aren't all that good.
04:32You're supposed to shoot the enemy, mate, not fight him.
04:35It wasn't about hardened soldiers.
04:38Instead, focusing on the friendship between two young and very handsome West Australians.
04:45Archie, played by Mark Lee, and Frank, played by Mel Gibson.
04:50We're both men.
04:56They brought to life the legendary mateship we think of as defining the Anzac spirit.
05:04Boosted by a healthy disrespect for authority.
05:08We might, sir.
05:10This is supposed to be war film.
05:16The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 is still remembered as the first major overseas battle we took part in as a
05:24nation.
05:25But we weren't fighting for ourselves.
05:28We were fighting for Mother England.
05:30The Anzacs find themselves not smashing the European stalemate, but fighting the same stationary war, with trenches facing enemy trenches.
05:41It was the complicated plan of Winston Churchill, who aimed to weaken Germany by knocking out one of its key
05:48allies, the Ottoman Empire.
05:51The strategy was that the Anzacs would help seize the peninsula, allowing the Allies to take the capital, Constantinople.
06:04But despite the patriotic songs of the day, it was widely considered a disaster.
06:22After eight months, some 18,000 Australians were wounded, and around 8,700 lay dead.
06:31About half of all the Anzac troops at Gallipoli.
06:41The First World War, even though it was terrible and dreadful, and so many people died, for Australia, the war
06:48had this whole sort of nation-making role, and we brought out this thing called the Anzac legend.
06:54Mateship.
06:55Sacrifice.
06:56Death.
06:57Glory.
06:58Yes.
06:59It has that sort of warrior mythology.
07:01It has the glory of the British Empire.
07:04All those ideas are embedded into that original version of the Anzac legend.
07:10And it was this blind faith in king and country that the film intended to challenge when it premiered in
07:181981.
07:19I remember the lights coming up just with tears streaming down my face.
07:25For a few seconds we thought, oh, this is, well, it might be a bummer there's just nothing happening here.
07:31Then an enormous applause because we tapped into something.
07:39By the time David Williamson wrote the screenplay for Gallipoli, he was already one of Australia's most prolific playwrights, capturing
07:47the zeitgeist with hit after hit.
07:52But he was not the most obvious pick to write a war film.
07:57One, two, three, four, three, two, one, four, one, two.
08:01I was heavily involved in the anti-Vietnam.
08:04I was president of the Youth Campaign Against Conscription.
08:07So I had no positive feelings about war or what it did.
08:10When they used to bring the old digger every year to Bairnsdale High School to ramble on, my mates and
08:18I sort of, oh, here it comes again.
08:25By the 1960s, 1970s, the values of those old Anzac diggers had just come to seem so anachronistic, so outdated.
08:39Crowds at dawn services and Anzac Day marches were declining.
08:43The World War I veterans, the ranks of them were thinning out, the ones who were still alive were very
08:49elderly.
08:49So it was widely expected that Anzac Day commemoration would die out along with the last of the old diggers.
08:59As solidarity with the Anzacs waned, one of the first pieces of art critical of the Anzac legend landed with
09:06a bang.
09:07A play called The One Day of the Year was hugely controversial.
09:13The playwright, Alan Seymour, received death threats and a bomb scare marred the opening in Sydney.
09:18You're picking on the old diggers now.
09:20Oh, to hell with the old diggers.
09:21You.
09:22Do you know what you're celebrating today?
09:24Do you?
09:24Do you even know what it all meant?
09:27The old man marched slowly, all blown, stiff and sore.
09:34The tired old hero from afar.
09:38By the 1970s, even folk songs began to rethink the Anzac's glory.
09:44What are they marching for?
09:49And I ask myself the same question.
09:56It was in this anti-war era that Peter Weir emerged, a brilliant director who would go on to have
10:03huge international success.
10:05But at this stage, he was best known for an Aussie classic, Picnic at Hanging Rock.
10:15I'd made a big strategic mistake in my career by turning down his offer to write Picnic at Hanging Rock.
10:23So when Peter rang me up, he gave me a second chance and said, I want to talk about another
10:27project.
10:28I jumped at the chance I wasn't going to miss out the second time.
10:31The Mike Walsh Show.
10:34What was the start of your love affair with the idea of Gallipoli?
10:36Well, I was on my way to London for the opening of Picnic, actually, and I thought of doing a
10:40story on the first war.
10:41I thought it was logical to drop in and have a look at the battlefield.
10:45Because staggeringly, it's as it was after the evacuation.
10:50And I think a very powerful atmosphere clings about that peninsula still.
11:06I cannot believe that I'm walking here at Anzac Cove, where in 1915, the Australian New Zealanders,
11:14along with a great uncle of mine, Bill Beeching, arrived at what was the beginning of the Gallipoli campaign.
11:22Now, 60 years later, the director, Peter Weir, turns up.
11:27He's got an inkling he might want to make a wall film.
11:31But Peter's actually shared with me a couple of pages from his diary that recorded his reaction about being here.
11:39And I'm wondering if by walking in his footsteps, literally, I might find the moment of inspiration for his extraordinary
11:46film.
11:54Peter Weir hasn't given a major interview about Gallipoli for more than 20 years, because he believes the film speaks
12:02for itself.
12:04But his diary, which has never been shared publicly before, reveals the genesis of his masterpiece.
12:13Friday, October 1st, 1976.
12:18Am I really here?
12:20I can't work out the features, but even tired and confused, the silent power of the place grips me immediately.
12:31I set out, feeling great, to walk up Shrapnel Valley.
12:37I'll never forget that two-hour walk.
12:40Eerie stillness.
12:41Felt ghosts all about me.
12:46I found water bottles and shells, a bullet, a tin ripped open by a bayonet, thousands of shards of broken
12:55stoneware made in Tamworth.
12:58And I see bones lying about.
13:03Ridges towered above me.
13:10Yea, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, occurred to me.
13:25When he was still seeing bones, it's so difficult to imagine.
13:31But one thing I think we both are experiencing is this whole peninsula is basically a cemetery.
13:40It's just one battlefield after another, graves upon graves upon graves.
13:47Reading that passage makes me feel that he decided to make the film Gallipoli somewhere along that two-hour walk
13:55from coast to peak.
13:58I wouldn't be surprised if he was already hearing that album-only, famous piece of music that starts and finishes
14:04his film.
14:16Well-filmed isn't a sort of war movie in the John Wayne tradition.
14:20It's more of a story about the friendship between two young men who go off to war.
14:24Exactly. The lightbulb went on at one point and we said this should be about a couple of Anzacs.
14:30Let's take a country bloke and a city type and let's get to know them because that way one will
14:36learn more about Gallipoli than all the battles joined together.
14:41The stupidity of war was obvious to both Peter and I from the start.
14:46It took years to pare it down to the essential story of two young guys going off to a war
14:53under false pretenses, thinking it was a great game.
14:57That's how it was sold to Australian youth.
14:59Free trip.
15:01Yeah.
15:02To Turkey.
15:02Yeah, and we'll beat the whatever we're going to beat. It's like a football match.
15:15When Gallipoli hit the big screen in 1981, it was part of the new wave of Aussie cinema that told
15:23our stories with our voices, writers, directors and actors.
15:29It was a cultural turning point.
15:38Gallipoli represents really the beginning of Anzac 2.0.
15:43Water bottles, water bottles, bottles.
15:45Give us the steps.
15:47Without art in the form of the film Gallipoli, the Anzac legend might have just died.
15:54Instead, the Anzac spirit came roaring back to life.
15:59Now, the face of the Anzacs was not old diggers.
16:04It was the Adonis like Mel Gibson and Mark Lee.
16:08So, what is the role of art about war in the context of this film, Gallipoli?
16:16I think the impetus was to say something profound about the futility and the tragedy of war.
16:24But I think, ironically, what they did in some ways is rebirth the Anzac legend for new generations.
16:37This renewed interest in Anzac 2.0 put Gallipoli on the backpacker map.
16:44Which gravestone did you take a photo of at Lone Pine?
16:47This is the most visited of the European battlefields.
16:51And the most common visitors are 20-year-old Australians and New Zealanders.
16:58One of them was Ozzy Benina, who later married Turkish tour guide TJ.
17:05Together, they started a tourism business to cater to the growing mass of pilgrims.
17:15Pretty much every night, we put the Gallipoli movie, 7.30pm, and all the backpackers in there, they're watching it.
17:24And next morning, when they get to the peninsula, they can feel, you know, what they've been through in their
17:29trenches in 1915.
17:31They hear the soundtrack.
17:33Yeah.
17:35Now a Turk in his right mind is going to waste a bullet on you.
17:39But so many more Turks died on the peninsula.
17:44It's officially 86,000 Turks died and unofficially 253,000 Turks died.
17:53Gallipoli wasn't just a horrendous loss for Australia.
17:57There were no real winners here.
18:02Welcome to this historic broadcast coming to you right across Australia and New Zealand, live from Anzac Cove.
18:09The backpacker pilgrimage became a rite of passage.
18:13Now the Prime Minister of Australia, Bob Hawke, is taking the podium...
18:17And soon, politicians followed suit.
18:19Because of their ingenuity, their good humour and their endurance...
18:24Bob Hawke became the first Australian Prime Minister to attend a dawn service on Anzac Day at the landing site.
18:32This place, Gallipoli, is in one sense a part of Australia.
18:40Indeed, five years earlier, the Turkish government had acknowledged our deep attachment to this place by officially renaming it Anzac
18:50Cove.
18:52And so, the dawn service became a popular fixture for Australian Prime Ministers.
18:59The sun will never set on the story of their deeds.
19:03It was for duty, loyalty, honour and mates.
19:08They bequeathed Australia a lasting sense of national identity.
19:20But as influential as it was, the film Gallipoli wasn't the last word on the Anzac legend.
19:27For me, the film Gallipoli is one of those touchstones that you go to to try to understand what Australia
19:35was.
19:36If I'm watching it now, I go, it's not us now.
19:40It doesn't represent us.
19:42For director Wesley Enoch, the eve of the 2015 centenary of the Gallipoli landing was the perfect moment to tell
19:51a new Anzac story.
19:53I'll put down very strongly Aboriginal in type.
19:58Jeez, how'd he work that one out?
20:04Instead of just reaffirming the story, we knew there was an energy to kind of really look at it and
20:10say, what else does this story hold?
20:12There's a black history here that has gone untold.
20:16And Black Diggers was part of telling those stories.
20:20I remember opening night at the Sydney Opera House.
20:23There was a sense that the whole audience just, this intake of breath and this sigh.
20:29And people up on their feet.
20:31They'd heard something they hadn't heard before.
20:35Black Diggers highlighted the stories of Indigenous servicemen and women during World War I, who despite facing discrimination at home,
20:45fought for king and country abroad.
20:49Do you think we're done telling this origin story, this Anzac legend?
20:55I've got a great belief in the Anzac story, which sounds contradictory.
20:58But if you think of the Anzac story as a beautiful trunk, it says something about the values.
21:04It says as this tree grows, it can then branch out into hold a whole myriad of beautiful stories that
21:11are connected to it.
21:14And yet we can't escape the fact that the roots of the legend of the Anzacs lead back to the
21:21needless death of young Australians.
21:26And one battle became emblematic of the disastrous campaign.
21:34This small area of grass is the no man's land of the Battle of the Neck.
21:39The Australians, about 20 metres that way.
21:43The Turks, with their machine guns, just over the wall.
21:46It's an area barely bigger than two tennis courts.
21:52Peter Weir wasn't the first artist to stand on this ground and be moved by what happened here.
22:00The official war artist, George Lambert, came here in 1919.
22:04But what he discovered was truly shocking.
22:10Because this entire area was covered with the bones of fallen Anzacs.
22:20Men still lying exactly where they fell.
22:24So it's no wonder that it had such a huge impact on him.
22:29And he made the decision to make his great work about this place.
22:37George Lambert's monumental painting of the Battle of the Neck was one of the first visual representations of the Anzacs
22:45that wasn't propaganda.
22:47Instead, it was a truthful and raw depiction informed by the detailed accounts of Australia's official war correspondent, Charles Bean.
22:59Bean's powerful account of this battle would also inspire Peter Weir and David Williamson.
23:06The 10th went forward to meet death instantly, as the 8th had done.
23:10The men running as swiftly and as straight as they could at the Turkish rifles.
23:16With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia.
23:30How fast are you going to run as fast as a leopard?
23:35Then let's see you do it.
23:41Look, the boys haven't ever made it a foot.
23:44Get away! Get away!
23:46Get away!
23:47That's your message!
23:53Get away!
23:54Get away!
23:59Men rushed straight to their death.
24:02Gresley Harper and Wilfred, his younger brother, the latter of whom was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in
24:09a footrace.
24:16That passage was the breakthrough for David and I, and we based the film on that passage.
24:29I knew growing up that my grandmother had three uncles who fought in World War I, and I always assumed
24:35that it was in Europe.
24:36And it wasn't until I mentioned that I was making this show to our family historian, Jim, that he told
24:43me that one of those uncles was actually here.
24:47Now, he's pulled a few records and some other things and sent them to me, and I haven't looked at
24:53them until now.
24:57There he is, Bill Beeching.
25:01Dear Rachel, your great uncle Bill Beeching joined up in 1914 at Gallipoli.
25:12God, that's wild.
25:16The regiment saw action in the ill-fated Battle of the Neck.
25:24By chance, Bill was taken ill with dysentery around ten days before that battle, and was shipped off to Lemnos
25:37for a week for treatment.
25:41He was in hospital during the Battle of the Neck.
25:46So, I can hear my brother in this.
25:49He'd go, so he got the shits and it saved his life.
25:56Amazingly, his two brothers, Jack and Fred, survived the war, too.
26:00Now, the story that my grandmother told me was that the three boys went to war.
26:08The three boys came home, and the women in the town, when walking past their mother, couldn't look her in
26:19the eye because she got all her boys back, and they lost so many.
26:39Australians' connection to the Anzac legend is not based on what actually happened at Gallipoli.
26:46It's based on a feeling, it's an emotional attachment to a set of values, and people enact those values through
26:55beautiful emotional rituals, like the dawn service.
27:07The thing about Anzac Day is that it is a piece of art in itself.
27:12It starts with ceremony, deep, powerful ceremony of music, of poetry, of oratory.
27:24And then moves into the pageantry, of walking the streets, of celebrating either your own service or the service of
27:32your family, to the protection of our community.
27:39I guess it's impossible to prove if Anzac Day would be what it is today without the movie Gallipoli.
27:46But I've got no doubt that Australians who have seen the film across so many generations feel that much closer
27:54to the origin story of the Anzac legend.
28:05Were you proud of the fact that the film kind of refreshed the Anzac ideal?
28:12I would have been more proud if the film had left a much broader impression that we will never be
28:20involved in a senseless war again.
28:23That's what, in my heart, that's what I was doing it for.
28:36Next time, I head into the jungles of Vietnam.
28:40When the song was released it was banned.
28:42Sit down with Aussie rock legends.
28:45This one hits.
28:46And discover the music that brought together a nation divided.
28:51Don't ever, ever tell me that songs can't change the world.
28:55You can't have another one for you.
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