By Melinda Houston
LEST WE FORGET WHAT?
★★★★
Lest We Forget What? 8.30pm Sunday April 19, ABC2.Credit: 215020001323
Sunday 8.30pm ABC2; Wednesday 9.30pm, ABC
The title of this alone is enough to pique my interest. Anzac Day is always an occasion when increasingly empty catchphrases and aphorisms are trotted out, and this year the jingoism is reaching fever pitch. I'm of a generation that grew up regarding war – and its celebration – with suspicion shading into revulsion. Kate Aubusson, on the other hand – whose documentary this is – was suckled on Peter Weir's Gallipoli and came to adulthood in the full flourishing of Australia's resurgent nationalism. She's also a journalist, though, and in the lead up to the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landing, is wondering just how much of her own emotion and sentiment about the event is grounded in fact. Starting with that contemporary Australian rite of passage, the beer-fuelled group tour to Anzac Cove, she proceeds to gently dismantle the various myths. Early in the piece she introduces an excellent analogy. The original Anzac biscuits were hard tack: flour, water and sugar baked to a tile-like consistency. Then Arnotts made its own version – consumed with great patriotism to this day – adding butter, golden syrup and coconut to create a far more delicious version of history. Her investigations reveal similar sweetenings, including that her "hero" great-great-grand-uncle, who fought at Gallipoli, was actually hospitalised with venereal disease and spent a large part of his tour AWOL. She talks with both soldiers and historians to flesh out the facts about the Great War and our part in it. And while she never articulates it expressly, there's unquestionably the acknowledgement that part of the origin of the noble myths is that it's much easier on the soul (both individually and collectively) to grieve the tragic fallen than celebrate the very efficient killers Anzacs had become by Armistice. Aubusson is very likeable and this is completely accessible. But it's also a powerful, frank, very moving and immensely important contribution to the Anzac conversation.