“Civil War”: An Outsider’s Perspective
Civil War, the latest movie from independent film studio A24, premiered April 12. A dystopian war movie set in the United States in the near future, it has received widespread acclaim (as is to be expected from an A24 movie). However, it has also been criticized in places as being somewhat hollow. So, I thought I’d talk about the movie. What it is and what it isn’t.
Let’s start with what it definitely isn’t. This isn’t your typical American war movie. Mainly because writer-director Alex Garland isn’t American. He isn’t beholden (consciously or otherwise) to the traditional jingoistic manner in which American war movies are made. American war movies have a tendency to paint the conflicts depicted in their movies as black-and-white. Clear good guys vs clear bad guys. And most of the time, American forces are portrayed as the good guys. They are the ones you’re supposed to root for. This movie isn’t that. It does not make any meaningful distinction between the different combatants engaged in the war (for most of the runtime I was never sure which soldiers were on which side), and I think that is on purpose. Because this isn’t a war movie about the soldiers. It’s about the people who watch the soldiers and tell us what they do.
So, what is Civil War? First of all, it is a beauty. Fitting that a movie about photographers should be so wonderfully shot. Every frame is alive, every pan is purposeful. It is a feast for the eyes. Add to that, truly stellar performances across the board, from Kirsten Dunst as Lee, an incredibly jaded war photographer, Cailee Spaeny as Jessie, a bright upstart (basically Lee’s starting point), Stephen McKinley Henderson and Wagner Moura. Even Jesse Plemons, who isn’t on screen for very long, gives a gripping performance in what is an absolutely gut-wrenching scene.
Second, I would say it is two things. The first is a tale of a point of view. If you read a synopsis on the internet, you’ll probably see something along the lines of “a film following a group of war journalists as they try to photograph/interview the President in the final days of a civil war”, and while that is technically true (that is in fact the plot of the movie), there is a lot more to this movie than just trying to scoop everyone else. As someone not from the US, the one thing that was clear to me watching this movie was, this is how it’s going to be if/when the United States tears itself apart. The US has existed as something akin to political entertainment for a long time now, and a war simply becomes an extension of that never-ending soap opera. This movie is about the people who broadcast those events, and how they look from the outside looking in.
This movie is also a story about the struggles to hold onto your soul. Lee and Jessie are essentially time-dilated mirror images of each other. When Jessie first joins them, Joel remarks that Lee wasn’t much older than Jessie is when she started out. Sammy mentions how much like Jessie Lee was when she was that age. That being said, coming face to face with a “mini-me” over the course of the journey starts to chip away at the carefully crafted wall of stoicism that Lee seems to have built up over time to cope with the pressures of the job.
By the time we get closer to the climax, Lee seems to have broken down completely, and it’s only the opportunity to do what she came for (get a picture of the President) that snaps her out of her freakout and get her back to what she does. Jessie, for her part, starts out shaky and unsure. She breaks down crying after a somewhat high stakes encounter early in the movie, and as the story progresses, she seems to settle into it, and after another (even more) high stakes encounter in the middle of the movie, she basically becomes Lee-lite. Unfazed by gunfire, explosions and the almost-incoherent yelling of soldiers.
It leads to an interesting moment where Lee is on her knees in the middle of what can only be described as a mental breakdown while Jessie is buzzing around, camera in her hand constantly clicking away. At the end after [MAJOR SPOILERS] Lee sacrifices herself to save Jessie from gunfire, Jessie does what Lee said she would do if Jessie got shot. She takes a photo of it. In that moment, you feel like Jessie has begun the journey that Lee underwent decades before.
Civil War is a beautiful movie with more than enough action to scratch the itch, but also it manages to tell not one, but two riveting and compelling stories at the same time.
