Civil War: Getting Through the Fog of the American Split

From filmmaker Alex Garland comes a journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

REVIEW:

Civil War is a war movie where the political divisions are never defined. We never know what the two sides are fighting over. All we see are the journalist and photographers covering the war. The movie is about the mental, emotional and physical damage these professionals endure to get the shot or the interview. What lessens this, is that they snap and write but are never shown filing stories from the field or even talking to editors over the phone or video links. After a while, I started treating the characters and stories as metaphors on the cost of war.

The hard bitten war photographer, Lee (Kirsten Dunst) has her younger metaphorical self to deal with in the form of the greenhorn, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Jessie is first seen taking photos of Lee taking photos of the dead. The echo between the two establishes a psychic and symbolic connection. To add to the meta, you are aware of the presence of the director’s, Alex Garland camera in front of them. The three lens length between the director, the women and the war participants- a fourth if you add the viewing audience- never lets you forget the emotional, physical, mental impact of viewing a war.

The battle scenes are effective, visceral and brutal in closeups. At a distance they are almost documentary neutral. There’s a belief among the photographers that they’re doing their job for our benefit, hoping to make a difference. They believe that they’re a vital step in the proces for peace. Clearly, that notion has been disabused from Lee, and in the process of the rest of the film, it will be removed from Jessie.

It’s an odd choice by Garland to rid war of its political leanings and just concentrate on the associated trauma. I initially saw it as a calculated decision not to offend the paying moviegoing audience that would be on the fence for a civil war film. However, in hindsight, it works. Garland has stripped the supporting players of demographics- age, race, class, gender or beliefs. One fatal standoff featured is between two women of color roughly the same age. The Antifa Massacre mention is so ambiguous as to have you wondering whether the antifacist got slaughtered or they did the slaughtering. The results of watching this undefined violence is a numbing PTSD. The whole movie is trauma therapy for Lee and a coming to it for Jessie. It made me think whether the war existed beyond their agitated minds. In turn, you watch it and are affected and cleansed.

Garland seems to be asking the audience to make the moral choice. It’s the same choices a viewer of a graphic battle photo of either combatants or innocent victims must make. Should I be offended or deeply moved? In Civil War not a lot of the photos are seen. The movie is the atrocity you must judge in real time.

The blinders on the story allows Civil War to move with gusto and breakneck speed. This is a lean, cruel, film about the ethics of photographing violence. And about viewing it also. We see this distancing occur every time a shocking, violent video is posted to social media without one ounce of interference from the videographer.

Democracy and patriotism get neutered in this kind of dispassionate film telling. Patriotic ideals of what the country was before the war started never come up. Any democratic choices are reduced to whether you would take the stairs or risk getting stuck in a elevator knowing that frequent blackouts occur.

Between Lee and Jessie it doesn’t come as a surprise as to who Garland would let live and die. A midfilm loss of a valued mentor and advisor leads to the metaphoric body switch where one becomes the other. You know it’s coming but you will still be moved and shattered. Getting the money shot ultimately will have some fatal consequences in war.