It's Oscars season, baby! And Australia just scored a record number of the nominations, with two films nominated in the best picture category for the first time ever. Unfortunately, one of those films was directed by Mel Gibson. The other was Lion, starring Dev Patel, who is incidentally really hot now.Gibson is nominated for best picture and best director for his film Hacksaw Ridge. What is Hacksaw Ridge? It is your favourite kind of movie, if you are my dad. That is to say, it is a war movie. A historical war movie about a historical WWII hero, that tells the true story of army medic Desmond T. Doss, who objected to violence and fought on the front lines without using a weapon or killing anybody, and who saved many lives while doing so. What's fun about Hacksaw Ridge is that it's a movie about a guy who hated war, that still manages to somehow glorify war. A tricky balance to strike.Here's the thing about Mel Gibson: he's not a nice man. At recent Oscars ceremonies, Australia has scored nods for movies like Mad Max Fury Road, and Moulin Rouge. Although you could make cases against both of those films, neither of them were directed by a 60-year-old dude who has been variously accused of domestic violence, homophobia, and anti-semitism.Mel Gibson who, after a decade of self-imposed career exile, almost definitely made Hacksaw Ridge because he envisions himself as a haggard Hollywood war hero who has overcome great struggle, is proof that if you are a white man in Los Angeles or really anywhere else, you can easily succeed against even the toughest of odds. Assault accusations, anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, lack of talent, obsession with dumb war movies—none of these things are barriers to your success. And if you wait around long enough, they'll actually be an asset—give you a kind of underdog advantage that may eventually score your an Academy Award nomination.If you're Lindsay Lohan on the other hand, you basically have to flee the country and start a new life in Greece to apologise for a mid-2000s coke habit.Luckily, although various Australian media outlets are claiming his nominations as victories (cheerfully glossing over his past indiscretions—the Sydney Morning Herald fleetingly refers to them as "a series of scandals"), Gibson is now a proud US citizen. Although he grew up here, Mel was actually born in New York. And it can keep him.Follow Kat on Twitter
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