Daily Dialogue — April 28, 2016
FIRING SQUAD LEADER: Would you like a padre?
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT: No thank you. I’m a pagan.
FIRING SQUAD LEADER: And you?
LT. PETER HANDCOCK: (to Breaker Morant) What’s a pagan?
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT: Oh, it’s somebody who doesn’t believe there’s a divine being dispensing justice to mankind.
Hancock turns to the firing squad leader.
LT. PETER HANDCOCK: I’m a pagan, too.
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT: There is an epitaph I’d like. Matthew 10:36.
FIRING SQUAD LEADER: All right, gentlemen.
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT: Well, Peter, this is what comes of empire building.
The pair are marched away from the prison grounds.
MAJ. J.F. THOMAS: Matthew 10:36?
REVEREND HESS: (reading from a Bible) “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
EXT. SOUTH AFRICAN VELDT — DAYBREAK
Harry and Peter are marched to the crest of a high grassland hill. A pair of chairs are placed side by side. As they walk the last 10 paces, Harry extends his hand, and Peter takes it.
At the chairs they turn to face the firing line, and sit down. The escorting soldier offers Harry a blindfold. He shakes his head no. Peter also refuses the offer.
The escorts march back to the firing line. The blood-red crest of the sun breaks the horizon. Its golden light filling the faces of Peter and Harry. As the squad leader moves down the line, handing each rifleman a single bullet, in VOICEOVER, we hear Harry reciting a now-famous poem written by the real-life “Breaker” Morant:
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT (V.O.): “It really ain’t the place nor time to reel off rhyming diction / But yet we’ll write a final rhyme while waiting crucification / For we bequeath a parting tip of sound advice for such men / who come across in transport ships to polish off the Dutchman / 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 / Let’s toss a bumper down our throat before we pass to heaven / And toast the trim-set petticoat we leave behind in Devon.”
Silhouetted against the sun, the line of soldiers prepares to fire.
FIRING SQUAD LEADER: Aim!…
LT. HARRY “BREAKER” MORANT: Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!
— Breaker Morant (1980), screenplay by Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens and director Bruce Beresford, based on a play by Kenneth G. Ross
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: War. Today’s suggestion by John Arends.
Trivia: Considered by many to be the greatest Australian film ever made. Based on real events and a now-legendary Aussie soldier, horse “breaker” and poet, this story of war, injustice and betrayal resonates even today.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by John: “The ending dialogue, in particular, sticks with you. The entire sequence, as filmed and edited, is astonishingly beautiful, even as it’s juxtaposed with the stark brutality, duplicity, soldierly discipline, courage and bloody irony of the story and its thematics.
And when you have your protagonist/hero shout the final iconic order/command to his own firing squad? Timeless perfection.”
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