On October 31, 1917, in the third year of the Great War, two regiments of Australian Lighthorsemen charged the Turkish defenses of Beersheba in Palestine. with bayonets in their hands, they galloped against machine guns, rifles, and artillery in an eleventh hour attempt to save the attacking British army from disaster. This is the story of some of the men and horses who rode into legend that day.
Simon Wincer’s The Lighthorsemen (1987) is a wonderful film I’ve watched twice before and barely remembered, and after a third viewing its hold remains tenuous. The 1980s was a decade of big nationalistic swings in Australian cinema, some of which missed—The Lighthorsemen, Burke & Wills—while others struck a chord and remain widely liked—Gallipoli, The Man from Snowy River, and Phar Lap, also directed by Wincer. It’s hardly a radical act of film criticism to note that some films are stickier than others, and that the stickier ones tend to survive the Darwinian struggle for celluloid longevity. Going into this third viewing of The Lighthorsemen, I was curious to discern what makes this film fade fast while a film like Gallipoli—also set during the First World War and dabbling in similar themes—seems to remain evergreen.
Setting aside contextual considerations and also matters of craft—both films showcase some of the best work of their respective filmmakers and crews—Gallipoli has two notable aces over The Lighthorsemen: an archetypal hero’s journey (which veers in its final act into tragedy) giving it a purity of focus, and a genuine movie star alongside the hero. Mark Lee’s journey from his family farm to the battlefield at Gallipoli is not unlike Mark Hamill’s journey as Luke Skywalker in Star Wars from his family’s moisture farm on Tatooine to facing down the might of the Empire. And just as Hamill/Skywalker’s earnest lead is garnished with the special sauce of an embryonic movie star in Harrison Ford/Han Solo, so too does Mel Gibson fulfill that function in Gallipoli; it’s understandable that the film sets Lee aside in its second act to follow Gibson through military training. In contrast, the more rudimentary The Lighthorsemen has several nominal leads—young cavalrymen in the Light Horse Brigade tasked with capturing Beersheba—none attaining archetypal status and none played by movie stars.
I say this not to fault the dutiful cast, including Peter Phelps and Gary Sweet—both good actors whose presence in Australian film and television has only enriched it—nor the late Jon Blake, a promising actor whose career was cut tragically short by an automobile accident and resulting disability. Nor do I write this to fault screenwriter Ian Jones, who previously co-wrote the Tony Richardson/Mick Jagger Ned Kelly. Jones’ script lacks Gallipoli’s purity of focus and David Williamson’s touch with dialogue— its historian’s imprint is seen in lengthy exposition scenes that arrest the story momentum—but is nonetheless ambitious in scope and thoughtful. And as mentioned, Wincer and the crew deliver generally strong work, with occasional faults such as rapid scene fades that suggest cutting for television. The crew includes DP Dean Semler, whose photography here is outstanding. Where his work on Razorback was deliberately stylized and all about obscuring its inanimate boar, Semler's work here is all clarity and cleanliness. From its opening scene of army stockmen herding wild horses in lush green country to the epic finale with cavalry charging across the parched Palestinian desert, Semler’s images are frequently stunning, made all the more impressive by the number of ingredients captured: motion, horses, pyrotechnics, dust etc.
And yet, the absence of a cleanly delineated hero and/or movie star occupying the frame—a Gibson in The Road Warrior, a Kidman in Dead Calm, a Costner in Dances with Wolves—means those images aren’t quite as sticky and resonant. They don’t etch as deep. It’s a telling illustration of the sheer, tangible value-add of a movie star in connecting with audiences.
Ben