Breaker Morant (1979)
In prison cell I sadly sit -
A d-d crestfallen chappy!
And own to you I feel a bit-
A little bit - unhappy!
It really ain't the place nor time
To reel off rhyming diction-
But yet we'll write a final rhyme
While waiting cru-ci-fixion!
No matter what 'end' they decide-
Quicklime? or 'b'iling ile? sir!
We'll do our best when crucified
To finish off in style, sir!
But we bequeath a parting tip
For sound advice as such men
As come across in transport ship
To polish off the Dutchmen!
If you encounter any Boers
You really must not loot 'em,
And if you wish to leave these shores
For pity's sake don't shoot 'em!
And if you'd earn a D.S.O.-
Why every British sinner
Should know the proper way to go
Is: 'Ask the Boer to dinner'!
Let's toss a bumper down our throat
Before we pass to Heaven,
And toast: 'the trim-set petticoat
We leave behind in Devon.'
-Harry "Breaker" Morant
Given that it came out just four years after the fall of Saigon, it is perhaps understandable that critics, particularly American critics, tended to view Breaker Morant as a kind of a backhanded commentary on the Vietnam War, specifically on My Lai. But to treat it as such is to put the cart before the donkey. The fact of the matter is that, despite the longing of 60s radicals to see it as unique, Vietnam was a fairly typical conflict and American actions, both official and otherwise, were largely consistent with the history of superpower involvement in foreign wars.
War is always a confused and brutal business, but when you pack soldiers off thousands of miles from home and tell them to prop up an obviously unstable government (otherwise the soldiers wouldn't be needed) and to shoot some of the foreigners, but not all of them, you virtually guarantee that atrocities (defined here as the willful killing of potential noncombatants) will follow. And when it is a democracy that is sending the soldiers abroad, and when the war goes poorly, you virtually guarantee that someone, usually the grunts, will pay the price for these crimes. Breaker Morant alludes to this fact himself when he quotes Lord Byron's poem written early in the 19th Century:
When a Man Hath No Freedom to Fight for at Home
George Gordon Byron
(1788-1824)
When a man hath no freedom to fight for at home,
Let him combat for that
of his neighbors;
Let him think of the glories of Greece and of Rome,
And get knocked on his head
for his labors.
To do good to mankind is the chivalrous plan,
And is always as nobly requited;
Then battle for freedom wherever you can,
And, if not shot or hanged,
you'll get knighted.
From Byron to Breaker Morant to Lieutenant Calley, it has ever been the same. It is then the mark of an immature people to hold the soldiers solely responsible for these actions when they do occur, rather than to blame the society at large for putting them in the situation to begin with and for not being prepared to cope with such incidents when they do occur.
In the actual case upon which Breaker Morant is based, seven Bushveld Carbineers were charged with shooting Boer prisoners and a German missionary during the British-South African War. The film deals with the January 1902 trial of Lieutenant Harry "Breaker" Morant, a British ne'er do well who had emigrated to Australia and become a breaker of horses, and two native Australians, Peter Handcock and George Ramsdale Witton, all of whom were defended by Major Thomas, an inexperienced attorney from New South Wales. It was a true kangaroo court, its verdict foreordained, and both Morant and Handcock were shot by a firing squad on February 27, 1902 (Witton's death sentence was reduced to life in prison and he was later freed by the House of Commons).
Bruce Beresford's terrific film version of these events avoids the staginess that typically afflicts courtroom dramas by the extensive use of flashbacks. The contrast of the wide open veld to the confines of court and prison in itself conveys the drastic difference between "civilization" and frontier. He gets excellent performances all around but especially from Edward Woodward (The Equalizer), Bryan Brown, and Jack Thompson. Woodward eats up the scenery as the boozy, intellectual, black sheep, Morant. Brown plays off him nicely as Handcock, all temper and appetite. And Thompson, as their attorney, starts out a bumbler but builds confidence as he scores unexpected points in court and finishes with a summation that, for my money, is one of the most powerful pieces of writing in film :
The fact of the matter is that war changes men's
natures. The barbarities of war are seldom
committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of
war is that these horrors are committed by normal
men in abnormal situations; situations in which
the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed
and have been replaced by a constant round of fear
and anger, blood and death. Soldiers at war are
not to be judged by civilian rules... Even
though they commit acts which calmly viewed
afterwards could only be seen as unchristian and
brutal...[W]e can not hope to judge such matters
unless we ourselves have been submitted to the same
pressures, the same provocations, as these
men, whose actions are on trial.
The thing that most stands out about that speech is that it could have been given by the defense attorney during any of a dozen wars that Britain and America have fought. But it is the conceit of civilized nations that we do indeed judge soldiers by peacetime standards, not by the circumstances that prevail in the situations in which we place them. And so Morant chooses as his epitaph Matthew 10:36 :
And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
And says of the whole patently unjust episode :
This is what comes of empire building.
These are awful truths, but truths we would do well to face up to. Breaker
Morant forces us to confront them directly and, because of this, is
an extraordinarily powerful and important film.
(Reviewed:10-Oct-01)
Grade: (A+)
