Daily Dialogue — April 7, 2012

EXT. PRISON BARRACKS — DAYBREAK

ESCORT OFFICER: Do want the padre?

BREAKER MORANT: No thank you. I’m a pagan.

ESCORT OFFICER: And you?

LT. HANDCOCK: What’s a pagan?

BREAKER MORANT: It’s somebody who doesn’t believe there’s a divine being dispensing justice to mankind.

LT. HANDCOCK: (to the officer): I’m a pagan, too.

BREAKER MORANT: There’s an epithet I’d like — Matthew 10:36

GUARD: All right then, gentlemen.

BREAKER MORANT: Well, Peter, this is what comes with empire building.

As the pair is marched toward the firing squad, CUT TO:

INT. PRISON OFFICE — CONTINUOUS

CAPT. HURT: Matthew 10:36?

REV. HESS (reading from the Bible): “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

EXT. OPEN FIELD — CONTINUOUS

Open, treeless hilltop at daybreak. The only distinct feature: two wooden chairs, side by side. As Breaker Morant and Lt. Handcock are marched toward the chairs, they join hands.

They sit. Each is offered a blind fold. Each declines.

The rising sun breaks the flat horizon. Over the firing squad loading their rifles:

VOICE OVER: “It really ain’t the place nor time to reel off rhyming diction. But yet we’ll write a final rhyme while waiting crucifixion. 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 Boars, you really must not loot ‘um. And if you wish to leave these shores, for pity’s sake, don’t shoot ‘um. Let’s toss a bumper down our throat before we pass to heaven, and toast the trim-set petticoat we leave behind in Devon.”

SQUAD LEADER: Aim!

BREAKER MORANT: Shoot straight you bastards! Don’t make a mess of it!

— Lt. Harry ‘Breaker’ Morant (Edward Woodward), Lt. Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown), Capt. Simon Hurt (Terence Donovan), Breaker Morant (1980), screenplay by Bruce Beresford, Jonathan Hardy, and David Stevens, based on a play by Kenneth G. Ross

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is facing death, suggested by @tiffanyleigh and @al_grinter. Today’s suggestion by John Arends.

Trivia: Three original Harry Morant poems are featured throughout the film. The first, ‘At the River Crossing’ (1898), has the last three verses of it read by Morant to his colleagues in the jail cell. The second poem, ‘Westward Ho!’, which was first published in ‘The Bulletin’ in 1893, has the fourth of six verses read on the night prior to Morant’s execution. The third and final poem, ‘Butchered to make a Dutchman’s Holiday’ (1902), has four of its seven verses are read during the execution scenes. Many of Morant’s poems were published in Australia’s magazine ‘The Bulletin’.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Execution scenes. This presumes the soon to be victim has had plenty of time to think of the very last words they speak. Choice of that Bible verse? Perfect.