They’re all bad people: Civil War, A24’s newest film, hits theaters
By Lauren Hernandez
“In a civil war, they’re all good guys,” my dad whispered to me in the theater.
“No, they’re all bad,” I responded.
We went to the theater tonight because we had nothing better to do, and my dad had mentioned seeing an ad for this “Civil War” movie a couple of days ago. The film, directed by Alex Garland (the guy who directed Ex Machina), follows a group of journalists as they race to Washington D.C., hoping to photograph and interview the president before he is killed.
This group consists of Kirsten Dunst as Lee, an experienced and well-renowned war photographer. She’s accompanied by Joel (Wagner Moura), her colleague, Sammy (Stephen McKinley), an older journalist from the falling-apart New York Times, and Jessie (Caelie Spaeny), a young recruit.
“War journalist” was one of the only things I heard about this film, and I immediately thought of Full Metal Jacket, but Civil War approaches morality in an entirely different, and much more modern, lens.
Physically, Civil War is gorgeous. Profile shots of the stunning cast in front of blurred backgrounds with chromatic aberration and sunspots make up a lot of this film, but so do perfectly crafted, impactful shots and seamless, immersive action scenes.
There are so many scenes that come to my mind and refuse to leave. One is when Jessie expertly processes her film photographs with Lee at her side. They sit in bleachers that are drenched in colorful graffiti. The pastel rainbow of this graffiti appears throughout the film, in soldiers’ hair and nail polish, in purposefully blurry reflections in a mirror and in chalk that marks out war zones.
The plot of the film flows like a river, which is a simple comparison, I know. But instead of focusing on any other element of war, Garland hones in on this group of journalists who are road-tripping over 800 miles to D.C. Along the way they encounter AR-wielding gas station employees who torture looters for days, crashed helicopters, families fleeing, but also neighborhoods where citizens ignore the chaos of their country, and refugee camps where displaced families are forced to make the most of their situations.
“These last few days I’ve never been more scared in my life, and I’ve never felt more alive,” Jessie said after witnessing two other journalists get killed. This quote sums up the entire film, which transitions from peaceful to harrowing in seconds. While many scenes show mundane moments in the characters’ lives, like trying to sleep in the midst of persistent gunfire or taking gnarly swigs from a bottle of whiskey and laughing while rolling another joint, other scenes stole my breath, or made me jump out of my seat or put my head in my hands or grit my teeth for seven minutes straight. I’m dramatic during movies, I’ll admit, but if you see these scenes you’ll get what I’m saying.
Like there was this one scene, I think it’s the first battle scene in the film, and Jessie is thrown into the forefront of gunfire and terror. The journalists are being protected by this group of rebels, and Jessie takes photos as one of their men gets shot in the chest and dies, his blood soaking into the concrete below him. After this, the rest of his men kidnap the military perpetrators, put sacks over their heads, and machine gun them to death while laughing. Jessie takes photos of it all.
Besides the ending, which I’ll talk about in a second, one of the most terrifying scenes occurs right after one of the most joyful moments of the film. The crew of journalists realize they are being tailed, and luckily it is by two reporters who are friends of theirs. One of these reporters, Tony, jumps into their car while they are driving probably 60 mph down the road. In a mixture of shock and awe, Jessie can’t help herself and jumps into the other car. Joy quickly turns to panic when, after Jessie’s car speeds away, Lee doesn’t see them further down the road.
Finally finding their car, the doors of it are wide open and Jessie and the other reporter, Jin Ha, are no longer inside. Instead, they have been captured by men dressed in uniform who are in the midst of burying about fifty other bodies. Obviously, nothing good comes of this. The remaining journalists barely make it out alive, Jessie having to crawl over the fifty other bodies to escape. In the car afterwards she throws up all over herself.
It’s brutal, but so is war I guess. The last scene I’ll highlight is the very end. The journalists finally get their interview with and a photograph of the president, and it is breathtaking, and not in a beautiful, awe-inspiring way, but more in the way that watching someone almost die in a car crash is breathtaking — like you can’t help but not breathe.
While the credits roll, the photo Jessie captures of the dead president slowly develops on screen. “It looks like they just bagged a buck” my dad whispered to me.
We both left the theater loving the film. My dad is a staunch Trump-supporting Republican, and I’m definitely not, and the film was so anti-political that we both loved it. People on Letterboxd were full of hate because they wanted something political, but I don’t see why we are looking for more things to divide us? Civil War showed how, in the midst of a divided country, we are all bad people - I thought it was fantastic.
