Year: 2024
Director: Alex Garland
This is an extremely well-made film that is also extremely annoying and frustrating. Its genesis appears clear enough: after the Trump assault on the capitol in 2021 zeitgeist-recycler Alex Garland clearly thought that there was a great idea for a movie. Fast forward three years and we have the first January 5th film, in cinemas before the end of the story is even known. We start with Nick Offerman as a President who has staged some kind of coup and is embattled in a civil war against the ‘Western Forces’ – ie California, and unlikely secessionist partner Texas.
Garland drops us into the middle of this conflict as feted war photographer Kirsten Dunst – none too subtley named Lee Miller, and her correspondent buddies resolve to go to Washington to interview the President before he’s exiled, executed or worse. Before they can get out of the hotel however a young apprentice female war photographer Cailee Spaeny who Lee saves in a bombing outrage, turns up to hitch a starry-eyed ride. I cannot tell you how personally annoying I found her character. Not only does she follow Lee around like a sad puppy, she’s a hipster Gen Z war photographer: in perhaps the least believable moment of the whole movie it’s revealed that she – in 2024 – shoots with analogue film that she develops on the road in a portable darkroom. Good luck getting a single newspaper to take photos you’d have to mail in.
The story is a domestic version of Apocalypse Now, with nasty Nick Offerman and the White House standing in for Colonel Kurtz and deep upriver. Instead of a Navy PBR we have a Chevy Suburban. Instead of the French Plantation there’s a small town with boutiques and banks seemingly untouched by the war raging just an hour’s drive away. There are atrocities – in the sharpest moments with a very nasty Jesse Plemons – and surreal scenes, all building towards the final showdown.
I have to say it looks superb from start to finish. The cinematography, from abandoned amusement parks to vigilante-run gas stations, is convincing at dropping in the imagery we know from wars of the past thirty years into American environments. But the story itself cannot escape a conventional war movie structure – and when there is a grizzled old mentor mentors a young apprentice the final scene can only go one way. Despite being writer-led (and his writing credits are very substantial) this feels undercooked, perhaps the rush to get the thing out while it’s a hot-button issue has led to the script being waved through.
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
This film did really well at the box office, so I think there’s appeal to war film junkies, and to those who want some analysis of the American rush to violence.
What a lot of critics have rounded on is the absence of any explanation of how this Civil War has come about. Cryptic references to a ‘Third Term’ and ‘the Antifa massacre’ are as far as the film will go in taking any angle on the war it depicts. And as a studio boss I can see why: if it does start with a Trumpist coup then the entire right-wing media will pile on and boycott calls will abound. The alternative…a left-wing coup, frankly isn’t remotely credible.
This is perhaps why Garland’s made the somewhat quixotic choice to follow the studiously neutral, yet still glamorous enough photographers. If they have a gun then they have to have a side, so are we taking their side or not. Camera porn – great product placement for the Sony Alpha and a vintage film Nikon (‘my dad’s camera’) proves an able gear stand in.
Now you could argue this is also a critique of the coverage of modern wars and how we soak up the warporn of tanks and planes without focusing enough on the why. Dunst who appears to be burned out as a human recorder of endless death and destruction, and Wanger Moura as a hard bitten writer, are in it strictly for the thrills and the glory. In one of the few lines to really hit home Dunst says she doesn’t judge, she takes the pictures so that others can judge. If you buy this angle then you can position this as a riposte to, for example, just about every Vietnam movie ever made which present the war as a given backdrop for stories of predominantly American triumph and tragedy.
I’m not sure I completely buy this. Vietnam was a real war we can look up on wikipedia. Civil War depicts a war which has not yet happened – which the film says might – and so to duck the question of why seems a decision.that makes fllm industry sense, but leaves Garland’s movie in a queasy sort of limbo.
I want to see this when I can, but Alex Garland can be a frustrating screenwriter: Sunshine was potentially a great, apocalyptic sci fi (Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun!) but the plot denouement was rushed and botched.
I saw it some time ago and haven’t thought about it since so am a bit hazy on details but I remember thinking the climax laughable, more in the staging than the writing. Running around the way they did so close to the shooting the photographers seemed to think themselves bulletproof, it spoiled the whole film for me it just looked so ludicrous. It had some great sequences though, no one who has see it will soon forget the scene mentioned above with Jesse Plemons.
I saw this at home and thought it came off as a series of Call Of Duty set pieces interspersed with some cheap, well-signposted emoting scenes. Cliched characters and dialog did not help.
A wasted opportunity for a really good idea.
That was exactly a thought I had too @mc-escher – the abandoned amusement park level, the office block level, the final boss – absolutely showing the influence of gaming on film direction and editing.
Risible.
…but enjoyable.
In fairness, the trailer was terrific
Damned, etc.