USA Today is reporting that the world premiere of Mel Gibson‘s anti-war film Hacksaw Ridge starring Andrew Garfield went down big at the Venice Film Festival. Like, really big. As in, 10-minute audience standing ovation after the lights went up, big. Outside the event, fans greeted Gibson with their faces painted blue, Braveheart style.

So… all is forgiven for the anti-Semitism, bigotry, girlfriend-abuse, and homophobia?

Good to know.

Hacksaw Ridge, played out-of-competition at Venice, tells the true story of Desmond Doss (Spider-Man’s Andrew Garfield), an army medic who refused to bear arms but later received the Medal of Honor for saving dozens of his comrades.

At the press conference, Garfield said Gibson was “like a good dad on set or a good mom, with that kind of wonderful nurturing instinct where you feel like you can do no wrong even when you’re already doing a lot of wrong.”

In a praise-filled review for Hacksaw Ridge, industry website Variety said “it will likely prove to be the first film in a decade that can mark (Gibson’s) re-entry into the heart of the industry.

“Yet to say that Hacksaw Ridge finally leaves the Gibson scandals behind isn’t quite right; it has been made in their shadow. On some not-so-hard-to-read level, the film is conceived and presented as an act of atonement,” the review continued.

The film opens Nov. 4 in the United States.