Film review: Civil War

 

In these days of media saturation, it is rare to go see a film with no expectations as to what it might be like and come away very impressed but that was the case last week with Alex Garland’s latest Civil War. The film imagines breakaway states battling the US Army in a revolt against an authoritarian government. Considering what happened in Washington not so many years ago the idea of divided United States tipping over into civil war does not seem as far-fetched as it may once have been. This film deliberately seems to avoid too many details of why such an event has happened and is much more interested in its effects on individuals though it does show a President who relies on meaningless but patriotic soundbites to rally his cause. It sounds worryingly familiar.

 

The parallels are easy to find and perhaps less unlikely to imagine than is comfortable but the movie largely stays away from the politics. Instead, we join the fighting on the ground in the company of a group of photo journalists tracking the insurrection and now aiming to get to Washington DC in time for the expected overthrow of the President. A well-oiled group who initially appear largely immune to the horrors they witness, they encounter a new perspective when an aspiring photographer Jessie Cullen worms her way into their company and ends up accompanying them. She has been inspired by the hard bitten Lee Smith yet as the task becomes increasingly dangerous, their positions start to reverse. Jessie, initially terrified by the frenzied things they encounter slowly becomes more confident and even brash while Lee’s culminative experiences and the brutality of this conflict make her start to doubt whether she can carry on this life. Considering the short time span we are party to it does seem a little unbelievable that Cassie would change from the shocked ingenue of the early scenes to the hardened veteran that she seems like in the final segments. Perhaps the film is saying how quickly war can decondition and change people. Certainly most of the people we meet along the way are selfish to some degree, some of them frighteningly so.

As you’d expect Alex Garland frames this with superb ambiance, taking us into the centre of some horrific scenes and ratcheting up the tension each time. One sequence where they encounter a group burying a truck full of bodies turns into a tense question of national identity and is hard to watch. The war itself is depicted in cityscapes pockmarked with distant explosions often shot from above while we also get to see Lee’s previous ventures depicted graphically right in front of us. All of the scenes past and present are alarming. In one a demonstration is violently torn asunder by someone running with a flag. A flashback draws out the peril of a group of trapped rebels somewhere in Africa pinned down by fire overhead.

The narrative cautiously ventures into how all this affects the photo journalists. They not only have to witness close up the chaos of these situations but later have to look for the best images more dispassionately which is probably even more harrowing. How do they select?  Does a great photo of an atrocity merit being seen by the world? What is the `best` photo? This comes into sharper focus when Lee has to decide whether or not to delete a photo of a deceased colleague and it is this incident that seems to start her questioning her profession. Having watched her earlier move economically and carefully through the violence when it comes to the final assault on the White House - where the President is making his last stand- she is of no use at all, bent over and sick of it all. Cassie on the other hand is racing ahead to get what could be the ultimate snap.

The camaraderie between the group is complicated and it might not always seem as if they are friends which the cast essay very well. Kirsten Dunst is straight faced and stoic as Lee who gets the job done seemingly without conscience. Yet this is not quite the case and later she starts to unravel conveying  what seems to be the horrible realisation of it all. Calley Spaeny rises to the challenge of a role that has to develop a lot in a short time and its thanks to her that we believe it. Wagner Moura’s and Stephen McKinley Henderson add ballast with two strong performances the former as the hard drinking Joel and the latter as the veteran who doesn’t want to quit regardless of age.

A heady stew of action, atmosphere and some great music lends the movie a class that is above an average war film with a gritty attention to detail and some staging that is as good as any recent action movie. Not for everyone perhaps but a great movie with substance is always worth seeing.