Much has been made about the release of writer/director Alex Garland’s latest film Civil War. Its appropriateness in these challenging times, what it may say about one side of the political aisle or the other and, now that it has been released, what it actually did convey about all of the above. Despite what more animated critics and viewers have said about the film, the truth is much simpler and less controversial than what you may have heard.
Civil War transports us to a not too distant future in America where war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and journalists Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) are documenting a brutal war between a fascist-led United States against the secessionist movements of the Western Forces, led by Texas and California, and the Florida Alliance. Lee and Joel plan a dangerous drive to Washington, DC in hopes of garnering an interview with the President before the Western Forces are able to move in and overthrow the government. Sammy begs to hitch a ride with them to Charlottesville, VA to cover the front lines. Soon, an aspiring young war photographer named Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) joins them on the dangerous trip as they struggle to survive and make it to DC.
There is certainly a thread of admiration for journalists present in Civil War as we following the quartet’s road trip into the heart of America’s second civil war in pursuit of documenting the raw truth of the conflict. Lee, Sammy, Jessie, and Joel walk into perilous environments so that they can conduct their duties as truth tellers and documentarians preserving history as it happens. This veneration of the journalist is even present within the film’s cinematography that beautifully intersperses still photography taken from the perspective of the war journalists in the execution of duties with the film’s shots themselves that make for a brilliant display of the characters’ work within the narrative and a highlight of what war journalists do in general. This film is partly a road trip film and making a successful film within that subgenre of course requires cast chemistry that makes traveling alongside them in the confined space of a vehicle feel welcoming instead of stifling. Dunst, Moura, Henderson, and Spaeny’s chemistry succeeds on this point and their camaraderie helps to make the emotional beats in their journey that much more impactful. It’s not all valorization and honorable duty for war journalists however, which Civil War also makes a point of highlighting through the character arcs within the film, particularly those of Lee and Jessie.
The audience is shown a montage of Lee’s experiences in other war torn locales along with the violence, gore, and despair that have turned her into a hardened press veteran of combat that is nearly as unflinching when confronted with combat as the military veterans she follows around. Despite this hard exterior, we also see that these memories haunt her during her downtime when she is alone with her thoughts and cannot run from them. In Jessie, we see a naive, but ambitious young photojournalist who is not quite as ready to be thrust in war zones as she believes she is, but by the end of the film, becomes as hardened to its realities as Lee and a different person more willing to take risks and ignore nightmarish realities in pursuit of the next perfect shot. All of these characters’ initial pursuit of journalistic truth and enthusiasm for documenting the horrors of war are made clear, but what is also on display is the toll that immersing oneself in those horrors has on a person’s psyche and what it can turn them into, even as passive observers.
The cruelty and coldness to human suffering and death required to survive in a war zone affects everyone within the radius of conflict, not just combatants and the film makes that clear as we observe the four reporters embark upon documenting America’s fall. Despite what many expected of this film leading up to its release, Civil War never makes any overt political statements about the current American cultural divide nor does it focus on the cause of the fictional war within its world. Instead, its overarching theme forces the audience to consider a much larger point and unflinching truth best encapsulated by Jessie’s endpoint in the development of her character; that war makes animals of us all. The America shown onscreen is replete with night skies lit aflame by rocket fire and a populace that had shed any semblance of order or civility and instead replaced it with savagery and a disregard for life. This is the grim reality of war that Garland sought to highlight with this film instead of a statement endorsing one political side or point over another, opting for the stark reality that societal fissure and polarization inevitably leads to a violent dystopia that hurts us all and makes monsters of men.
This may be best conveyed during a scene featuring our intrepid reporters junked down on the estate of a sniper hidden in a mansion exchanging gun fire with two men dressed in full camouflage. Joel tries to pry out of the men whether they’re U.S. military or part of the Western Forces, on a mission to take out an enemy combatant. One of the men tries, and fails multiple times, to explain that they aren’t on any side and don’t know the sniper’s motivation either. He’s just trying to kill them so they’re trying to kill him too. And thus Civil War’s point, conflicts such as these inevitably devolve into wanton killing and cruelty for killing and cruelty’s sake, regardless of what caused the initial spark.
Civil War is a cautionary tale that may not directly reference our current politics, but still serves as a stark warning for those who believe internal conflict within societies will lead to a utopia of their liking. War has costs that change people and bring out humanity’s baser instincts, elevating cruelty, selfishness, and cold calculation on a level that is only conducive toward destruction, both of the institutions and structure that make civilized living possible and of the human soul and spirit themselves. Civil War succeeds in making this point by unflinching putting on visual display the brutality of war using gorgeous, picturesque cinematography and using character development to display the psychological toll of mass combat and death. It doesn’t take a direct allegory to current culture war fodder to make the overarching point that political disagreement should not devolve into armed conflict. In avoiding such myopic commentary, Alex Garland has crafted one of the most effective anti-war films in ages.
Image: A24
