Wednesday, January 4, 2017

Bigger Than Bigger Than Life

Mel Gibson's Hacksaw Ridge starred Andrew Garfield in the story of Desmond Doss, a pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II whose heroism as a medical corpsman earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Pointing out just how cutting edge this here blog is, I had a little item on Doss back in 2011. I'm still waiting on Mel to return my call.

The movie compressed certain characters and scenes and left others out to make a narrative that fit the time frame and arc, as movies often do. But this movie, as Mary Katherine Ham notes, actually left things out because real-life Desmond Doss was even more awesome than the movie version. My favorite is the cave rescue he helped in 1966 -- I guess heroes gotta hero, no matter what the situation.

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