Gallipoli · reception & legacy
1981 · Peter Weir
How Gallipoli has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
An instant landmark on release — it swept the 1981 AFI Awards and was hailed as the crowning film of the Australian New Wave. Forty years on it hasn't needed a reappraisal: it's still the film Australians mean when they say 'our national cinema'.
What's debated
The perennial fight is over its history: the film pins the doomed charge at the Nek on tea-sipping British commanders, when the fatal orders actually came from Australian officers — accuracy sticklers have been relitigating that ever since.
Its footprint
'What are your legs? Steel springs.' is quoted by Australian runners and coaches to this day, and the freeze-frame final shot is one of the most famous endings in cinema — endlessly referenced whenever people list gut-punch closing images.
Where it stands
A stone-cold Australian canon film and Anzac Day perennial — the 'you must have seen this' entry point to the Australian New Wave, and the Mel Gibson performance cinephiles point to from before Hollywood claimed him.