Civil War is Alex Garland’s latest film about war journalists on assignment. Renowned photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) is grieving because the war is in the US, her native country, not a foreign location. Her adrenaline-junkie partner, Joel (Wagner Moura), handles the story like any other and sticks to his routine of carousing with other journalists in hotel lobbies, camping under the sky next to cars, and rushing towards danger. On their way to their next story in DC, they decide to bring the aging expert Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), the living vestige of the New York Times, and the inexperienced Jessie (chameleon Cailee Spaeny in a drastic turn from her role in Priscilla). The journey changes each of them forever.
Civil War centers on women in journalism
Garland departs from exploring heterosexual relationships following his last film, Men. Using war as a stark backdrop and the pressure needed to crystallize his characters’ personalities, Garland focuses more on individual character studies with Jessie as Lee’s accidental, unofficial biographer. Dunst is pitch perfect as the serious, blunt Lee. When she spots Jessie, she is immediately protective of her. Preferring to help Jessie from repeating her mistake of entering such a soul-scarring, life-threatening profession, Lee initially discourages her then relents and acts as her taciturn mentor. At her cheeriest, her demeanor hardly changes from a dull monotone.
In contrast, Jessie is more expressive. She dives into her work until she is in danger and realizes too late that her camera does not bestow invincibility. Garland uses Jessie’s fangirling as a prose dump so he can inform his audience that Lee is a big deal and pay homage to the real-life Lee Miller, who took photos at Dachau. As Jessie grows more comfortable with Lee, her admiration turns flirtatious. Jessie may remind Lee of her past innocence and enthusiasm, but in a rare, peaceful, small town with a boutique, Jessie encourages Lee to dress up and smiles like a prospective suitor surveying a romantic prospect. This interaction contrasts Jessie’s diplomatic refusals of Joel’s offers to keep her company. These moments allude to a subtle, queer-coded subtext about Jessie’s character.
As the two spend more time together, they appear to be trading places as Jessie is hungrier to capture the perfect image, and Lee becomes more emotional over the destruction, though Lee retains her honed instincts. Garland pauses the action with glimpses of the images that the women capture: black and white for Jessie and color for Lee.
A gray zone
Civil War feels like All About Eve (1950), as if Garland admired Roland Emmerich and exchanged the cliche of women’s rivalry for solidarity. It is nice but limited in a Highlander franchise fashion — only one woman photographer can be on top. Garland is unrivaled in terms of visuals. Because the characters are photojournalists, the images matter more than the substance of the conflict, or physical impact versus theoretical ideology.
Garland explicitly rationalizes eschewing such narrative details in a scene in which a shooter’s identity is never revealed. Still, this unseen person is trying to kill the press and camouflaged soldiers with sidewalk chalk-colored hair. The soldiers reject Joel’s questions about sides. The governing morality is someone trying to kill them versus someone trying to save them. Beliefs do not matter.
As Garland moves his characters from urban occupation zones to the less war-torn East Coast countryside, the sounds of nature are as dominant as the sounds of gunfire, with vast swaths of green giving a false sense of security, which is precisely when the worst danger arises. At least when bodies are openly hanging from highway underpasses and car washes, the characters are reminded of their mortality and do not let their guard down. Picturesque nature hides atrocities.
Bleed Americana
People who love Civil War are probably in awe of images of the U.S. plunged into war-torn chaos. Americans are not accustomed to the idea of an extended battle in their backyard and the sustained, deliberate chaos that war brings. Our violence usually erupts like a sudden storm and does not fully envelope large swaths of land, impacting scores of people. It delivers the same sickening wonder that Independence Day did by imagining familiar, famous sights under siege and subject to utter destruction. Instead of an alien invasion or a natural disaster, it is domestic political unrest. The missiles arc in the night sky and the razing of iconic D.C. sites are undeniably impressive and shocking. Garland resolutely answers the question of what it would look like if the U.S. was at war now.
Garland deserves kudos for making the artistic choice to follow the same rules of the journalists: limit to showing, not editorializing, but there are flashes of less objectivity. While watching the film, regardless of how they dress, ask if the fighters are protecting the journalists or not. There are atrocities on both sides, but this detail is Garland’s tell regarding which sides he prefers. At times, the journalists move as one with the fighters and brandish cameras with large lenses instead of guns. They lose any pretensions of professionalism, objectivity, and civilization as they suffer their own losses. All lofty journalistic goals give way to brutalism. The Aborigines allegedly believe that photographs steal souls so have the camera women become cannibalistic monsters? It is an unanswered question.
All style, no substance
A younger viewer with artistic tastes may love Civil War, but it is no Bushwick (2017) because the substance of the conflict matters even if Garland rejects the need for such details. This dystopian world is unconstitutional with a three-term President (Nick Offerman) who kills the press yet still retains the infrastructure of authority by holding ground in DC and occupying the key seats of government. Alaska is a neutral territory as if it was a foreign country. Hawaii is not mentioned. The Carolinas favor POTUS, which historian buffs will recognize as never a good sign.
The Western Forces, which include at least Texas and California, and the Florida Alliance, oppose him, but it is unclear whether they are working together. The prior has the military infrastructure and experience and encroaches on DC. The journalists and the incumbent’s opposition race to see who will get to DC first.
On the outside looking in
Here is where Garland’s foreignness does not serve him as well as an American filmmaker. During the pandemic, the regional dividing lines became obvious, and they did not fall along those lines so it may be hard for Americans with long-term memories to suspend disbelief that California and Texas could agree about anything even in the unlikely scenario of hating the same people.
There is a scene at a stadium turned refugee camp, which has the feel of a joyous, impromptu campground or tailgating gathering, not a place of hard-scrabble refuge. Anyone who remembered the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina would not have such a sunny view of such scenes though it was a necessary emotional respite. He does nail the scene with Jesse Plemons, playing a soldier who judges people based on who is a real American based on an accident of birth location otherwise Garland rests heavily on imagery from the Vietnam War when a closer analogy would be the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Not Alex Garland’s best work
After twenty-four years of filmmaking, Garland is not at the top of his game, which would be Ex Machina (2014). He can be proud of himself for exploring new territory. Civil War is an intimate tale about consummate, famous professionals facing the malaise of oblivion and wondering what personal, intimate good they can offer the world instead of just getting more accolades and continuing to go through the motions of getting the perfect shot.
Civil War is out now in theaters.
Images Courtesy of A24
REVIEW RATING
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Civil War - 7/10
7/10
Originally from NYC, freelance writer Sarah G. Vincent arrived in Cambridge in 1993 and was introduced to the world of repertory cinema while working at the Harvard Film Archives. Her work has appeared in Cambridge Day, newspapers, law journals, review websites and her blog, sarahgvincentviews.com.
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