Film Review – Civil War
Yes, we are a music magazine and don’t usually review non-music films, but music photography is a large focus of our enjoyment at a gig, so we are reviewing this film from a photographer’s perspective.
I am late to Civil War. Other than seeing some general impressions of the film, not all positive,, I haven’t really engaged with what people’s impressions have been. I have just got out of a showing and thought as a photographer, I would gather my immediate thoughts, as the film is more of a homage to war photo journalists than I had realised.
Alex Garland’s film takes place in a near future version of the USA where a President seems to have overstepped his Presidential power, closing down the institutions of government and staying on for a third term. An alliance of southern states have waged war on the President who has authorised the bombing of US citizens.
The actions follows two war correspondents Lee, an awarding war photographer, (Kirsten Dunst) and Joel (Wagner Moura) in the final days of the war as they race to DC in the hope of capturing an interview with the President before he’s disposed. Along for the journey are Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a young rookie photographer and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a seasoned New York Times journalist who doesn’t know how to retire.
For much of the film it is a road journey through a war torn un-United States. However, it is less about the civil war, with the film exploring what makes a war correspondent do what they do. Why would you put yourself in danger to photograph the worst side of humanity? Alex’s father was a journalist at the Telegraph and Alex grew up around people like those in the film. This is his homage to these courageous people.
Kirsten Dunst is excellent in the role of an experienced but jaded war photographer who realises she has shut herself off the horrors she photographs and who in Jessie, the young rookie, see’s her younger self and does not want Jessie to become her. Having believed she was sending messages back home as a warning to stop people doing the same, but with Americans fighting Americans, she knows she sacrificed part of herself for no reason. Jessie meanwhile looks up to Lee and gradually, like the American soldiers around her who are killing fellow Americans, she follows Lee’s path and becomes immune to the horrors she is photographing.
The film is beautifully shot. The cinematographer, Rob Hardy, manages to make the film feel like it has been captured by a war photographer. Pretty much all the film is filmed as first person, putting you right in the action and horrors.
I am not sure what I was expecting. Given the political aspect, I had expected the politics to be more overt. But they aren’t. At no point do the journalists discuss the right or wrong of the opponents. While, there are fascistic aspects to the President, no side is presented as right or wrong. The war’s progress simply plays out and is documented by the journalists.
As a photographer, I have never been able to do street photography. I always see people and not photos. I have never understood the idea of photographing people dying or in distress. Seeing a person’s death in a photograph, seems to dehumanise who the person was. I found this a really interesting study of a type of photography I could never do. The idea of running towards danger is challenging enough. To photograph and not help, seems completely alien to me. With daily images bombarding us about the horrors happening to civilians in Gaza, I keep wondering how you can ‘stand by’ and photograph such horrors. But it is because these horrors are happening that people are capturing them. It needs us to be horrified to remember our humanity and to do something about it. This film, is about those people who hold up a mirror to our inhumanity and what they personally sacrifice to do their job. Definitely a candidate of my film of the year.
