Without putting much thought to it, I'd always believed that the toughest part of the Gallipoli campaign was landing on the beach, but this documentary makes it clear that, however bungled those landings were, much worse was to follow.Gallipoli is in what is now Turkey, a narrow peninsula guarding the Dardanelles, the narrow straight that led from the Mediterranean Sea to the Ottoman Empire's capital at Istanbul and, oh, how the Allies wanted to conquer and occupy Istanbul.Maybe I'd better back up. Kids, this is World War I we're talking about. (That's the one that came before World War II.) Great Britain, France, and later the United States, fought against Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. There were a lot of little countries involved as well. The Ottoman Empire, centered in Turkey, was crumbling. It had been crumbling for years. That's what the Crimean War was all about. That was in 1859 and -- well, forget it.Here's how the Allied thrust against Istanbul began. A powerful British fleet showed up and began to shell the Turkish forts. The idea was to make such a demonstration of power that the Turks would throw up their hands and immediately surrender. The Turks might even be happy to be liberated. Instead, they sank a couple of battleships and drove the fleet off. The Allied leaders were irritated and reluctantly decided they'd have to send troops ashore. They did so at Gallipoli and the attempt failed. No, it didn't just fail. It was a bloody calamity.This film gives us all the misery of the trenches at Gallipoli. Structurally, it resembles Ken Burns' splendid series on the American Civil War. There are still photographs, motion pictures, talking heads, contemporary location photography, and letters from the troops. But, within the strictures set by time, it lacks the fullness of Burns' quotidian detail. Also like Burns' film, it doesn't really provide enough maps. When the 4/15th attacked Hill 1870, I didn't know who was where or what the objective was.It's possible that some of the commanders didn't know either. World War I was fought during a period of extreme social-class bifurcation. There was the officer corps and then there was everybody else. As a commander, if I lost 10,000 men and you lost 11,000 men, I won.And the director, Tolga Ornek, doesn't shy away from professional disinterest in the men's welfare. The Australin/New Zealand soldiers were order to charge across a field that was covered by Turkish machine guns. The first wave failed. So a second wave was ordered. When that failed, a third and then a fourth wave was ordered. Hundreds of soldiers were shot down and killed and many more wounded in an area the size of a tennis court.Even in their own lines men were catching diseases or dying from them. The fields were littered with rotting corpses. There was no sanitation. The latrines were boxes or holes dug into the sides of the trenches. The flies would be feasting on a putrefying body one minute and landing on your open can of bully beef the next.But then the entire war, like all wars, was rather like a disease that periodically breaks out in epidemics. A documentary like this fills us with pity for all the suffering. "War is all hell," as General William Tecumsah Sherman said. It's not only tragic but, as the film illustrates, positively melancholy. And then we begin to gear up for the next one. Those ubiquitous flies.I'm happy to report that this documentary hasn't succumbed to the faddish use of lightning-quick editing, reverse negatives, a cascade of computer-generated special effects, or glitz in any form. It's a straightforward depiction of the Gallipoli campaign, with a greater emphasis on the personal rather than the military aspects.

In my opinion, the movie is an excellent example of the realities of war and a tribute to the soldiers of all nations who fought and bled into the soil Gallipoli. The lack of violence in no way detracted from the magnitude of the tale in hand. It is honest, true and brave, just like the men that fought and died at the Hellespont. The lack of brutal depictions of violence are just and proper. Those men suffered enough for freedom, liberty and the right to self determination in a free and better world. They never wished to ever see such scene's again.That is the legacy of the event of Gallipoli. To suffer scene's of gratuitous pyro-technics and blood and gore is best not shown for the maintenance of proper respect for the combatants of this crucible of nationhood.This film glories in the magnificence of men fighting for their lives,with honour, courage, dignity and irrepressible spirit and humour in the face of appalling adversity. This film is not interested in making a spectacle for fools to cheer over. The brutal outcomes that occoured from these personal combats of these men is not a thing that those that survived ever wished to see on a screen for entertainment. They saw enough of that at the time, and would much rather have never seen it at first, and never wished to review such scenes again on a screen in the name of "entertainment". The brutal horrors of the actualities of the vicious combat fought at Gallipoli were scenes that haunted their waking and sleeping hours for the rest of their natural days. It was the painful internal scars they, the men of all those nations who fought, carried inside to their graves. They all fought,and many died in the face of it all and somehow they, those mighty hearted men, managed to laugh in the teeth of constant dread death because they would'nt insult their mates by not being prepared to die game beside them. That's Australasian for brave, game is, but it applied to all combatants to a greater or lesser degree, but word from the boy's that fought was that Johhny Turk was as game, that is as brave, as you would ever wish for a soldier to be.ANZAC's and Turks were fighting to establish their place on the world stage, and from 25/04/15 onwards, their respective claims for equality in Nationhood were made known and undeniable to that world. The director has made a masterpiece that truly honours the spirit and memory of those soldiers and serves as a reminder to future generations of all ages, for children can be taken without fear of frightening them for the sake of visual "horror" and it's morbid and pointless appeal. And children should attend this movie so as to learn what happened at that sacred shore before they were born. So that they can remember. For it is the nature of men, that they soon forget.

There is an interesting split in the voting for this movie (at the moment at least). Those who go expecting a documentary are impressed, or at least not disappointed. I anticipate that those giving the film 1 out of 10 are those who expected a war movie or a re-enaction of the invasion of Gallipoli.So - if you want to see actors, gunfire and gore, this film will not suit you. If you want to see an independent documentary about Gallipoli, without bias towards any one side (the only enemy in these events was the War itself) then you'll come away both impressed and sobered. I found it a very moving film, and even quite liked Captain Guy Nightingale by the end.

We went to the cinema expecting a biggish budget release and got an art-house movie. The movie was projected digitally onto about two thirds of the screen real estate with sloping edges classic of digital projection, and had a limited stereo soundtrack which was wasted on the cinema experience.The content of the film was the same old historical content we have all seen before, but heavily sanitized to prevent the audience being sick. Live action scenes what little of them there were, were re-used constantly in classic documentary style, which became annoying after a while.I was somewhat amazed that only 4 people turned up to watch it, guess the rest knew something we didn't.I suspect the producers made the film to recognize the ninetieth anniversary of Gallipoli. I have to question whether they should have bothered.Seven out of Ten for trying, and out of respect for the ANZAC's.