“It really ain’t the place nor time to reel off rhyming diction, but yet we’ll write a final rhyme while waiting crucifixion.”
Streamlined and blunt, Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant is an unsentimental examination of wartime atrocities, the ever changing rules of military engagement, and the impossible ethical quandaries that are passed down to the ground troops during the chaos of battle. Though rooted in the linear courtroom proceedings over accusations of war crimes, it hops around the timeline with recollections of the events in question and subjective flashes of memory, creating a rangy yet focused picture of the controversial trial that saw two men diplomatically killed by a firing squad and another sentenced to life of penal servitude. With a keen eye for staged drama and masterful touch with the recreation of historical warfare, Beresford provides one of his patented messageless explorations of human conflict.
In 1901, near the end of the Second Boer War, three Australian guerilla soldiers fighting under the command of the British army are court-martialed for the murder of Boer prisoners of war and a German missionary. The trio of accused are led by Harry “Breaker” Morant (Edward Woodward), a bush poet, adventurer, horseman, military officer, and murderer who had signed on with the Bushveldt Carbineers on April Fools’ Day. Astutely, Beresford portrays Morant as a showman given to sentimentality and myth-making without allowing the film to function as a platform for hagiography. Indeed, even as he theatrically defends himself on the witness stand and recites his own poetry as his execution rapidly approaches, Beresford ensures that he does not allow the self-styled romantic to become a sympathetic martyr by presenting the evidence against him with clear eyed cynicism.
Morant’s fellow defendants are Peter Handcock (Bryan Brown), who has entered the war to financially provide for his young family, and George Witton (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), who felt compelled to fight based on national pride. Their prosecutor, Major Bolton (Rod Mullinar), is pressured by Lord Kitchener (Alan Cassell) to speed through the trial rapidly in order to secure a conviction and appease the German Emperor who has objected to the killing of the missionary. The defense counsel, Major Thomas (Jack Thompson), a small town solicitor who mostly deals with wills and such, mounts an unexpectedly strong argument on behalf of the accused. Though his initial argument, that they can only be court-martialed by the Australian Army, is ignored, he goes on to establish that his clients were acting on spoken orders to take no prisoners—orders passed down from Lord Kitchener himself. However, it becomes evident as the trial unfolds that the verdict has been predetermined, that the decision to send these men to death is not one strictly based on the facts of the case, but rather on the diplomatic situation. The sacrifice of three men, guilty or not, is viewed as a small price to pay in service of political expediency.
It cuts right to the paradoxical heart of the matter—these men may have committed a moral evil by killing their enemies, and yet they’re not on trial for an immoral act, but for breaking a shifty code of conduct. Ironically, they are acquitted of the missionary’s death—arguably the least morally permissible—and condemned for following Lord Kitchener’s orders.
In the film’s most derisive moment, Witton, the only one of the three given a chance to live out his days, approaches the cells of Morant and Handcock, handcuffed and crying. “See you in Hell, mate,” Hancock says. “Why are they doing this to us, Harry?” Witton asks. Morant replies, “They have to apologize for their damned war. They’re trying to end it now, so they need scapegoats. We’re scapegoats, George! Scapegoats for the empire!” In effect, they’re a peace offering. This sentiment is echoed as the two men prepare to go before the firing squad.
Sentry: Do you want the padre?
Morant: No, thank you. I’m a pagan.
Sentry: And you?
Handcock: What’s a pagan?
Morant: Well… it’s somebody who doesn’t believe there’s a divine being dispensing justice to mankind.
Handcock: I’m a pagan, too.
Morant: There is an epitaph I’d like. Matthew 10:36. Well, Peter… this is what comes of ‘empire building.’
Thomas: Matthew 10:36?
Minister: “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”
What’s interesting is that even as the accused passionately defend themselves, the reality of the crimes are never really in dispute. It is clear that they killed the prisoners of war. This is not a film of gross injustice carried out against innocent men. There’s certainly judicial bias but these soldiers have real blood on their hands. But as Morant so caustically illustrates with plentiful scorn in the courtroom, it is simply asinine to take the deliberated moral certainties arrived at in the confines of a safe courtroom and pit them against the harsh justice of the battlefield. As the prosecutors consider these unwritten orders, the possibility that men wearing khakis as a ruse of war might be considered permissible targets, whether the missionary might have been a spy, whether or not the Boer’s mutilation of Captain Hunt (Terence Donovan) should be considered, Morant cuts through their deliberations and angrily says that the prisoners were shot “under rule .303!” (referring to the caliber of his rifle). It’s this notion of the brutal reality of tactical decision-making in wartime that features most heavily in Thomas’ summary argument, which states: “The fact of the matter is that war changes men’s natures. The barbarities of war are seldom committed by abnormal men. The tragedy of war is that these horrors are committed by normal men in abnormal situations. Situations in which the ebb and flow of everyday life have departed and have been replaced by a constant round of fear and anger, blood and death.”
There was a chance that the drawn out courtroom proceedings might have become heavy and tiresome, but Beresford adeptly avoids this by utilizing a staccato editing technique involving close-ups, flashes to the battlefield, and extended scenes of important events. The battlefield sequences are superbly realized and function as a suitable leavening agent, while a wisely forgone soundtrack is replaced by a diegetic brass band that crops up from time to time. Also working to lighten the weight of harrowing trial is a strain of black comedy running throughout, mostly issuing from Morant and Handcock who both exhibit a wry gallows humor to go along with their world weariness. Even as he approaches his own death, Morant displays a defiantly sarcastic bent in his requests and final utterances.
Like many of Beresford’s other historical films, Breaker Morant was extensively researched. One of his most fortuitous discoveries was Scapegoats of the Empire, an account written by Witton after his life sentence was commuted. It was suppressed at the time but due to the success of the film saw a reprint in 1982. Another great find was a letter written to home by a member of the firing squad that killed Morant and Handcock, containing a firsthand account of their last moments and providing Beresford with a strikingly poignant detail. As the two men walk toward the appointed site of their deaths, Morant reaches over and holds Handcock’s hand, a final act that revealed that, despite the detached, above-it-all persona he exuded, he still sought comfort as he approached the end.