William T. Sherman told that the war was hell, but few people believed him. Romantic vision of war as a display of chivalry, valour, honour and noble sacrifice was more popular. WW1 changed all that with the pointless slaughter and unimaginable suffering in the trenches of Northern France. In the same WW1 was fought on many different battlefields, and some of its episodes looked like they had slipped from the earlier, "gentler and kinder" pages of military history. One of such episodes is the subject of The Lighthorsemen, 1987 Australian epic directed by Simon Wincer.
The plot begins in 1917 when the forces of British Empire are facing Turks in Southern Palestine. Two years earlier, British had tried to knock Ottoman Turkey out of war by launching amphibious landing at Gallipoli. That affair ended very badly, especially for Australian contingent. Yet, despite the horrendous losses, Australians have maintained their fighting spirit, especially Light Horse, the regiment of mounted infantry. Young recruit Dave Mitchell (played by Peter Phelps) joins the unit and must prove himself to his battle-hardened and more experienced comrades. The real test comes when the British command decides to make a great push to dislodge Turks from Palestine and capture Jerusalem. Turkish positions at Gaza are next to impenetrable but the huge desert spaces of Palestine, unlike France, allow more manoeuvrability. The key to British plan is Turkish stronghold of Beersheba, which is deep behind the lines and contains strategically important water wells. Australian Light Horse must reach Beersheba by bold outflanking manoeuvre across open desert and than try to take out numerically superior garrison by surprise cavalry charge.
The Lighthorsemen could be best described as the anti-thesis of Peter Weir's Gallipoli. Unlike Weir who had taken pacifist stance, Simon Wincer and his screenwriter Ian Jones (who had written two books about the event described in the film) approach the Australian combat experience of WW1 with the militaristic enthusiasm which is at times amusingly anachronistic. The film reaches almost chauvinistic levels in praising valour and military prowess of Australian fighting men. The closest thing to pacifism in this film are couple of lines lamenting the loss of fighting comrades or one character not being sure whether he could kill another man. Of course, part of the reason for this could find in the historical fact. Te raid on Beersheba turned out to be completely different from the useless carnage during the botched Gallipoll Campaign. Wincer recreates this event with almost docudrama levels of accuracy and care for the details.
However, films that try to be as historically accurate as possible usually do it at the expense of their dramatic value. The Lighthorsemen is not an exception. The events are seen through the eyes of few "ordinary" characters, all of them cliched, just like the situations which they encounter. Wincer, however, acquits himself for such flaw with beautiful cinematography, great stunt work and the clever use of Australian locations that simulate late 1910s Palestine. The best thing in the film is the final battle scene, one of the most spectacular in few last decades. Viewers can only imagine logistical and technical problems of directing hundreds of horses and riders and it is understandable why filmmakers, even with CGI technology of, hesitated to repeat Simon Wincer's effort (footage from this film was later used in one of the episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles). Wincer dealt with those problems admirably and the result is the film which is, despite some of its flaws, in many ways unforgettable. As such, it could be recommended as the ultimate guilty pleasure for military history aficionados and a film that, through some perverse set of circumstances, even resembles certain current events.
(Historical notes: The incident portrayed in this movie is often noted as the last successful cavalry charge in military history. That claim is false since the cavalry played important part in subsequent conflicts like Russian Civil War (1918-20) and Soviet Polish War (1919-21). Even WW2 featured few instances when cavalry successfully charged enemy.)
RATING: 6/10 (++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on April 2nd 2003)
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