Blank Check with Griffin & David Gallipoli with Jennifer Kent
Mar 29, 2026
Jennifer Kent, Australian filmmaker behind The Babadook and The Nightingale, joins to unpack Peter Weir’s Gallipoli and the history of Australian cinema. They explore Gallipoli’s national resonance, Weir’s intimate anti-epic approach and visual style, Mark Lee’s underrated performance, and the film’s marketing and cultural legacy.
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Seeing Gallipoli As A Child Then Again As An Adult
- Jennifer Kent describes seeing Gallipoli at age 10 on a school field trip and how vivid images stayed with her for decades.
- Rewatching in her 50s she was gutted, connecting the film's depiction of mass suffering to contemporary news and feeling the timelessness of civilian harm.
War As A Sudden Narrative Punch
- Weir structures Gallipoli as a coming-of-age buddy adventure that delays war until the final act.
- The film spends the first 60–90 minutes on mateship, sport, and play, then compresses the devastation into the last 20–30 minutes for maximum emotional impact.
A Bottle Sparked The Film Idea
- Weir conceived Gallipoli after visiting the battlefield and spotting mundane objects like an Eno bottle among casings, which humanized the dead.
- That banal detail crystallized the film's idea: these were ordinary kids using the same everyday products as the present.