A small group of war correspondents travel through a dystopian America in the not-so-distant future in Civil War, opening in Prague cinemas from Thursday after bowing stateside last week. This hard-hitting drama from Alex Garland (Ex Machina) wildly succeeds as a parable about widening division within the contemporary United States, but is less satisfying in its own narrative terms, and the particulars of its central conflict remain frustratingly ambiguous throughout.
Civil War is set in a landscape that feels unsettling close to modern-day America, as the sitting U.S. President (briefly played by Nick Offerman) has apparently gone into dictator mode during his third term and utilized the military to attack its own people. Heavily-armed militias from California and Texas have formed an unlikely alliance and are advancing towards the capital as the rest of the country plunges into uncertain chaos.
Kirsten Dunst stars as veteran photojournalist Lee Smith, who opens the film by protecting aspiring young photographer Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) during a suicide bombing at a New York City protest. Smith and veteran reporter Joel (Wagner Moura) plan to drive to Washington, D.C. to get what might be a final interview with the President before the White House is stormed. Despite Lee’s protests, Jessie and veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) hitch along for the ride.
The landscape that Civil War takes place in is a fascinating “what if…?” of an alarmingly realistic future, but slowly fed to us through overheard radio reports and briefly-glimpsed computer monitors, and never the central focus of the narrative. At no point, even up through the memorable final shot, do we have enough information to take sides or form a rooting interest in the titular conflict.
Instead, we follow the photojournalists as they document the war, seeing the events not through their eyes but through their cameras. These characters, surely, have a lot more information about what’s going on in America than Garland’s script for Civil War affords the audience. But we only learn about what’s happening through their immediate experiences.
That’s the one big failing of Civil War: it wants to showcase a war-torn America through the lens of journalists, but also tell the story of those journalists at the same time. And that becomes an impossible task because we know so little about these people and their motivations; as these characters drift through a American wasteland filled with danger at every turn, we never learn enough about them at a core character level to care about their journey.
Civil War follows a long line of movies that chart the experience of war correspondents covering tense conflicts, which includes 80s classics like Under Fire, The Killing Fields and The Year of Living Dangerously. The best of these movies uses the stories of the journalists as a springboard to uncover greater tragedy; the worst falter as they get lost in the stories themselves and lose sight of the bigger picture.
Civil War falls somewhere in-between. Especially in its final shot, the movie might remind audiences of powerful pieces of real-life photojournalism, such as Kevin Carter’s The Vulture and the Girl, which featured a malnourished Sudanese child and a vulture lurking behind. The photo inspires a visceral response, not just by what it depicts, but in the relationship between the photographer and subject: is there a moral obligation to intervene rather than document?
Carter killed himself months after winning the Pulitzer Prize for his photo, haunted by memories of documenting famine and poverty. We can rationalize that, ultimately, his photo may have led to greater awareness of tragedy and aid for those in need that outweighed the psychological toll on the photographer and the lack of immediate assistance for his subject.
But in Civil War, Garland does not afford his protagonists such lofty ambition. His characters appear to be chasing the big story with all the zeal of Jake Gyllenhaal‘s tabloid photographer in Nightcrawler, but even his lurid financial interest was more engaging than the non-story of these characters. As Dunst’s desensitized Lee goes through the film in an increasing state of depression, we struggle to identify at every turn; had we only known what she wanted to achieve with her work, we would have been able to invest in her journey.
But despite its central storytelling flaws, that Civil War raises issues like this at all is a something of a win for a big Hollywood blockbuster (with a reported $50 million budget, it’s A24’s most expensive film to date). And the film’s final 20 minutes documenting the siege of Washington, D.C. are masterfully choreographed, shot, and edited, and truly thrilling. As Spaeny’s photographer gets in the way and is tossed around like a ragdoll by invading forces, the film even manages to provide some commentary about the role of the journalists in the conflict; an entire film on the level of Civil War‘s final act would be a masterpiece.
Civil War closes with a photograph taken by one of the protagonists that would be one of the most iconic moments of American history captured on film. But as the photo gradually exposes over the end credits roll and we’re asked to consider the senseless nature of war, we’re also painfully aware that we lack the necessary backstory for this moment to have any real power within the context of the movie itself.
2 Responses
5.5/10. Expected so much more. Will be disappointed if this really is Garland’s last film.. I don’t think he’s delivered on his potential since Ex Machina.
Went into this movie expecting so much more. Wasn’t bad for what it was, and great performances from Dunst and Moura, but the trailers and posters sold a movie that just isn’t there.