Civil War
Disorientating, less a nightmarish Independence Day, and more a reflective Don McCullen-esque movie, this Alex Garland written and directed drama plays a game of ‘what if…’ What if America fractured back into civil war again, and the sides, pursued by the media, engaged in a conflict of images as well as of arms? Though given the Trump inspired march on the Capitol and a security guard saving lives, fiction is stranger than fact…
Using drone like shots, we’re meant to think of Vietnam… Also the bizarre as the photojournalists wander into unsettling urban warfare settings, where guns are law, and where armoured vehicles and checkpoints suddenly appear without warning. We’re being pushed into thinking of Ukraine, Syria, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Rwanda, Beirut, the demise of the Marcoses in the Philippines, the Chibok schoolgirls, Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Bosnia-Herzegovina, even at a point the Holocaust through a sensory juddering of images and disturbing scenes. If you have any hint of PTSD, it will leave your head reeling with sensory overload; but not really your heart. Partly this is because real life does this kind of thing so much better — the movie script really needed to be ramped up to even come close. It’s also not satirical or exploratory enough — so that your heart is left somewhat cold. Not the actors faults, but I think the script. We never really learn what the civil war is about or who’s fighting who — though perhaps this is a media pointed parody of real life, in that the media parachutes into the latest war zone with little understanding of what’s really happening and covers it, before drifting onto the next excitement.
Strangely it’s like a bizarre family road trip as four photojournalists majoring on war head off to interview the President (Nick Offerman), only to get gazzumped by events. Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) are veteran military assigned journalists who head off on a scoop to interview and shoot (camera not gun) the beleaguered and increasingly surrounded President of the former United States. To get there they have to negotiate local militias, ominously empty landscapes and the fact that there aren’t just two sides, but many fractures, mostly a lot of people with access to guns just doing their own thing. Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie is the newbie on the block and total Lee fangirl. Lee fumes because she doesn’t want the rookie anywhere near the chaos, having already had to rescue her once; Joel is a bit kinder and looks out for both of them. Another veteran is Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Sammy who proves to make a terrific getaway driver.
Given that we’ve seen and are seeing the horrors of modern urban warfare in our own life times, and many of us have experienced the media frenzy of the Iraq Wars or media abuse of the Trump attempted takeover of the centre of political power, the movie had a lot of material to work with. It also used Lee Miller’s life along with a lot of Don McCullen-esque images — unsurprisingly this movie looks really good and photogenic. But it lacked his humanity or her social impact. What it did well was to pull the audience into this strange discomforting world and the random; what it could have explored more deeply was women in the world of photojournalism, PTSD and trauma, the abuse of civilians in war, the attack on democracy, the horrors of house to house urban warfare, the cultural destruction of wars, as well as satirising recent times. Even considered the image in war and conflict — it’s creation, manipulation, power and abuse; how independent the media really is? Most of all what makes ordinary people turn on one another, people they know, went to school with, were neighbours with could have been dissected.
Instead we get hints. There is a lot of lynching, but we don’t know why. A man is torturing two ‘looters’ in a car wash, proudly wearing a cross (and doing the opposite of what Jesus would do), including one guy he vaguely knew at school. The press junket comes across episodes of isolated warfare such as a besieged gunman in a house or a terrifying man in weird shades who decides who’s American or who isn’t purely from birth place - at gunpoint, whilst calmly dealing with a massacre of civilians. The bloodlust at the end when the military go in with the winning side to get the President was overwhelming, particularly as they are led there by following the journalists on a hunch. The portrayal of how the media are shielded by the soldiers was fascinating as they assault the White House. At the beginning the journalists end up shooting a man being shot by a whole bunch of other guys — but who any of them are and what they’re about is anyone’s guess?!! There is gore as a battlefield wound is feebly treated. The hunting down of the President and ignoring of any military conventions of treaty/prisoner care was grim. But it could have been more horrifying, more grim, have shaken us to the core in dystopian terror (in this era of militarised sexual violence, online politics and image presentation) and made us going away thinking how much we want to treasure others, democracy, freedom, communities and all kinds of people, and question extreme nationalism and violence. In fact, real life is much more dystopian and wildly rivals fiction for new horrors.
Kirsten Dunst’s Lee is haunted by the traumas she’s photographed in the past and what it all means, as well as how being the vehicle for the message means suppressing emotions. She also offers great advice to the rookie — which everyone then ignores, by not wearing helmets and barely a protective vest throughout! I wish we saw Lee taking more photos — this is mostly left to the rookie. Though the film does a unique thing in showing women mentoring other women, and in friendship between men and women, and between men. But I wish Jessie hadn’t been made to look so young and almost child-like; it was a bit jarring.
Another nice touch was the journalists’ observance of their surroundings — what they could see (or couldn’t see), how to handle and defuse or de-escalate difficult situations, their vigilance and navigation of landscapes, their readings of situation, safe spaces and people. Sometimes a telescopic lens doubles up as a spying tool…
Despite the many issues it could have explored, the movie never quite touches the heart, heading towards the explosive denouement of taking down the President and blowing up a lot of ancient monuments and culture along the way. I came away feeling overwhelmed with the fragility and the value of life — we see several people casually murdered during the course of the plot. Also of the strangeness of war, as shown in a civilian refugee camp where normal life goes on — there are families, children, skipping games — or in the gun protected town where water is squandered on lawns, whilst across the nation, others thirst. I also realised (again) how much I hate seeing people shot on screen — you really feel it watching Civil War, it’s brutal. Also the magnificent job the best journalists do (particularly photojournalists) in bringing truth and reality to the world. But also (as in the end credits) how that image can be distorted and misused.
- Though maybe because I’m a Brit I missed things — ‘Civil War’ Highlights a Growing Divide in American Culture…and Not in the Way You Think (substack.com)
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