“Don’t do this.”
At one point in Civil War, while reflecting on past assignments covering violent power struggles and sectarian conflicts around the world, photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) says that she long considered the images she captured as warning signs sent back to the United States: don’t let the country’s increasingly extreme ideological divisions lead to widespread armed conflict. Yet here she is, on American soil, documenting the advance of the “Western Forces” of Texas and California against a sitting president, with the U.S. military responding in brutal kind.
This call to step back from violence is about as political as Civil War gets. Written and directed by Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men), the movie offers some clues as to what might have led things to this state. (The fact that this is the president’s “third term in office” suggests a disregard for the Constitution that should be familiar.) Though some have criticized the film for being apolitical, I appreciated the approach. Rather than exploit current tensions or use them to score easy political points with a particular demographic, Civil War is a call to de-escalate. It’s the fictional equivalent of one of Lee’s images, cast on the big screen.
Essentially a road-trip movie, Civil War follows Lee, Reuters writer Joel (Wagner Moura), veteran journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and tagalong aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) as they make their way toward the White House, hoping for an interview with the president (Nick Offerman) before the Western Forces close in. (Not promising is the rumor that journalists caught in Washington D.C. are being shot on sight.) Along the way they experience an America at turns in denial (a small-town main street conducts business as usual, but only because local snipers watch from the rooftops) and dysfunction (needing gas at another stop, they encounter a station commandeered by three men with assault rifles, charging exorbitant prices while torturing a pair of “looters” who used to be their high-school classmates).
Seeing the two victims hanging by their arms in the car wash, Lee asks one tormentor to pose with them for a picture (which he happily does). This is one of many moments where we see Lee’s clinical approach to her job, a seeming lack of empathy. Yet in Dunst’s tough, weary performance—and in the occasional, traumatic flashbacks we get to her previous assignments—we understand that this is the psychological armor she puts on to do the job. It’s the only way she can get the perfect shot, which she hopes will become a vessel for garnering the empathy of her audience, whose mobilization will have the potential to effect far greater change than she can in that moment.
It turns out, surprisingly, that Civil War is less interested in the particulars of contemporary American politics and more interested in journalistic ethics on the battlefield, in all times and places. The movie explores the tension inherent in the job—between educating the wider world and ignoring, if not exploiting, the suffering of those being observed. For what it’s worth, the movie is attuned to the cost of Lee’s approach, especially in the frequent insert shots of the images that she and Jessie make along their journey, which capture the humanity, pain, and panic of those on the other side of the lens. In its increasing vulnerability and fragility, Dunst’s performance too captures the personal price one pays to immerse themselves in such anguish while trying to remain emotionally detached.
Those insert shots also break up the traditional “action” momentum of Civil War—at least until the film’s finale. Set around the White House, the climax unfortunately resorts to a more familiar form of “boots-on-the-ground” filmmaking. Exciting and thrilling in a way that the movie’s previous sequences were not, it undercuts much of the horror that came before.
And yet, Civil War remains meaningfully provocative down to its final shot—notably, an image made by Jessie, one full of the sort of conflict and contradiction that feels all too real. This is a movie I was somewhat dreading—its premise just seems too possible in these fractious days—yet Garland managed to imbue Civil War with a solemnity and maturity that made me grateful for it. Let’s hope it remains a warning, not a weather vane.
(4/17/2024)
