Edge of darkness : ‘It’s time Hollywood forgave me’

‘Hacksaw Ridge’ is Mel Gibson’s first directing effort since critically-acclaimed ‘Apocalypto’

LOS ANGELES: One of the most sought-after names in Hollywood, Oscar-winner Mel Gibson has been a pariah in the film-making community for a decade. Ostracised by Tinseltown after an anti-Semitic tirade captured on tape during a 2006 drunk-driving arrest, the actor-director has since had to make do with obscure or poorly received films.

It is a far cry from the adulation Gibson enjoyed after Mad Max and Lethal Weapon established him as a star; before he went on to win Academy Awards for producing and directing 1996’s Braveheart. As he unveils his new faith-based, World War II drama Hacksaw Ridge this weekend, the 60-year-old devout Catholic hopes cinemagoers have shorter memories than movie executives.

Hacksaw Ridge tells the true story of Desmond Doss, played by Andrew Garfield, who enlists and is determined to save lives on the front line as a medic. However, he refuses to carry a gun on moral grounds. “It highlights what it means for a man of faith to go into a situation that is hellish and, in the midst of that maelstrom, this man is able to hone his spirituality and achieve something higher,” Gibson said at a conference recently. He had been asked to comment on the film’s brutal violence but could have been describing his own baptism of fire back in the glare of the Hollywood press pack.



Asked about his own faith, Gibson looked uncomfortable and responded simply that he was “imperfect” and a “poor practitioner,” who could take a leaf out of Doss’s book. If his return to the director’s chair is as successful as reviews of Hacksaw Ridge suggest it ought to be, he may have to get used to answering awkward questions about his private life again.

Gibson faced accusations of anti-Semitism after the release of his 2004 film The Passion of the Christ. The upcoming show is his first directing effort since the critically-acclaimed Apocalypto in 2006 – the year of Gibson’s anti-Semitic rant at a US sheriff’s deputy.

During the high-profile arrest in Malibu, Gibson said Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world. He later apologised, blaming alcoholism, but he had already been facing accusations of anti-Semitism.

Gibson and his wife of 26 years, Robyn Moore, split up soon after, and there were no more starring roles on the big screen until the lackluster thriller Edge of Darkness. Even after his acting comeback, the controversies surrounding the star were far from over. He was spared jail in 2011, when he decided not to contest domestic violence charges pressed by Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva, the mother of his seven-year-old daughter Lucia.

Gibson – who is expecting a ninth child later this year with 26-year-old girlfriend Rosalind Ross – was sentenced to three years of probation and ordered to attend domestic violence counselling. He won critical acclaim for his role in close friend Jodie Foster’s The Beaver, but the 2011 film was a commercial flop.

In a recent podcast, Gibson said he was trying to put the 2006 incident behind him, and found it annoying that people were still bringing it up. “Ten years have gone by and I’m feeling good. I’m sober and for me it’s a dim thing in the past,” he said. By Monday next week, the opening box office figures for Hacksaw Ridge will indicate whether the public has forgiven him.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 3^rd, 2016.

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