Civil War: A Movie For Sure. I think
The Movie
I'm just riffing here because this movie blew my mind at just how little it blew my mind. Spoiler I guess? There isn't really much to spoil. I haven't watched a ton of movies, but because of that, I like movies a good chunk. They often feel new to me, I don't recognize all the patterns that make them predictable, and they can take me somewhere new. Even bad movies I can generally find good in.
Civil War was a brand-new experience for me. When the movie was done, I felt exactly the same as when it started. Literally no difference. The movie had no direct effect that lasted at all. I felt like I had time-travelled. My mood had nothing new, I gleaned no new info, no new experience. It was actually unreal how little anything this movie was, especially given that it looked pretty good.
At one point when I was talking to Shrey about music, he told me that while I listen to music, listen to the production, get lost in the stories, and think about the lyrics, he hears music. If it sounds nice enough it's nice enough. The only way I can explain this movie is that it isn't for people who watch movies, it is for people who see movies. It looks good, the characters move around, and there's a big conflict somewhere in there that the characters navigate from start to end. I went in knowing that it was apparently pretty apolitical somehow, but I wasn't expecting it to have absolutely nothing at all about anything anywhere.
So the movie follows some journalists in an American civil war who are trying to talk to the president. Let's start here because it seems to be something that happens. It is the ultimate quest that happens. First, why would the president listen to them? They have no reason. If they did manage to ask the president a question, why would he answer? No real reason. What question? The only character that poses some mediocre questions dies, so they really have nothing even if the president was with them and promised to answer. Do they make it? Well, kind of. They see the president but he just kind of dies. So this whole quest is just kind of nothing, so let's look smaller.
Maybe it is a larger quest of discovery in a chaotic world? Well, nothing is really discovered. Externally, the main group just navigates some problems on the way, which they navigate by saying they're the press. Everyone for some reason respects the press a ton and lets them do their thing. In an early sequence, the press are in the way and taking pictures while people are trying to rescue a shot comrade. No one cares about the press in the way taking pictures, they just kind of move on. No characters really develop. They don't even start with development, they just exist at the start. There seems to be an attempt at a “Come and See” like the development of a young photographer, but it ends up just being her looking into the camera a couple of times. Not even looking particularly messed up, it's just a person looking.
What happened
At some point, they are in a parking lot and take a picture of a helicopter. I forget if it was first but it didn't really do anything so I'll put it here anyway.
The gas station. They try to buy gas and the American dollar is worth nothing. Canadian dollars are more tempting. Some looters are being tortured. Nothing really happens, they just talk about the need to be brave and take pictures. OK. They just kind of walk around for a second, frankly, I completely forgot about the scene spare the joke about 300 USD buying a sandwich.
Next, they go to a place with a firefight and we get the above-mentioned scene where the press are just actively in the way. This does touch on a civil war being cruel and disorganized with killings of surrendered people, and I think was generally supposed to show that risk and show that there are indeed gunfights in this movie that might carry risk.
They make a stop at a refugee camp where they drink around a fire, and hell, if we all just hung out real nice around a fire wouldn't life just be so nice? We wouldn't have to be so worried!
There is a sniper battle scene. This one is brutal. They get shot at so put their van in cover. They notice a sniper in full camo aiming at where the bullets are coming from, so... they run over to where the sniper is, flash their press badges, and try to talk to the snipers. This seems like the best way to get the sniper spotted, but anyway, the sniper naturally is with them. Who are you fighting for? I'm just keeping myself alive. Who are you fighting? The other guy. I feel like this was supposed to be a soldier solidarity of I fight not for the generals but for the guys in the foxhole next to me. All I can say is: “What?” Mate it's a civil war. You have chosen to be an active militant on your own and you are in a battle with one other person. If you don't have anyone in the foxhole and nor does the other person, then just, why? Also, the paint on the sniper seemed designed to not be able to be read as any alliance. This scene really bothered me. It was a real peak of feeling like it was supposed to be intense, but it was just the press fucking everything up, no one caring and everyone involved being sculpted to have as little political depth as possible, to the point of no character having any... character. Sometimes they do something a little shocking one way or another, but they are all so devoid of any real motivation or sense of place in the world. You know, maybe that's it. No character here feels like they have any real mission they are on because of their beliefs of the world. They are all just existing and doing something. Why? Well, you know.
So they needed to spice it up. One of the characters gets kidnapped and gets caught up with a pink sunglasses guy who is filling a mass grave. Interesting. Pink Glasses asks the characters where they are from and when the press people say American cities he says ”Yeah that's America.” A guy we barely met says Hong Kong and pink sunglasses kills him. OK. The press main guy who was apparently his friend starts I am a doctor screaming and the scene ends with an extra press person killing pink sunglasses with their car. This was the only scene that almost had a sovl. Ooh, xenophobia he doesn't like non-American Americans. I can see that happening. Somehow, it still felt like an apolitical guy. Like no real political anything. It didn't seem like a message of racism here and there in this system is bad and violent, it truly seemed like just a freak hick who did that and it was bad. Anyone can get behind that! Almost no one would think of themselves as that character, so it can pass. This is when the only character to think of questions for the president dies. Guess they have no real aim in their quest anymore.
They arrive at the base and realize the war is pretty much le over. The president is surrounded and has almost nothing left while the Cali-Texans have a lot. The scoop they had is done. The president is meaningless now since he lost. He isn't the president of anything, and if they reached him, they wouldn't get any questions because the president would get domed the second they got close with anyone. Anyways, they continue. This is the only time you see jets and they just kind of fly over the camera. Jets would be critical in this situation, but there you go.
Anyways, there is a pretty cool battle scene and the press does nothing but get more and more in the way of anything just to take pictures of hallways before any opps show up. Eventually one of them dies and it's supposed to be so dramatic but, you know, it really wasn't. They follow soldiers to the president and stop the soldiers from killing the president to get a final quote which is... “Don't let them kill me.” This felt rather underwhelming.
So
This movie wasn't bad. It was truly nothing. No one did anything worth anything, no characters developed, and there was no political stance in a movie about an American civil war.
It felt like there was supposed to be a PTSD arc for the young photographer but it ended up manifesting as just her looking at the camera sometimes.
At one point I noticed how it really seemed like cameras were likened to guns and thought that could make a cool statement. Maybe the way we operate the press is violence? Maybe the way we just take pictures isn't actually helping people and we have a responsibility to do that? Or maybe it's just to show that the press is actually brave and cool guys!
I think we brought up two theories for what this movie was really about. One was about showing the chaos that America sows overseas and bringing it home to show what it is like to have a coup and political chaos, uprisings, and violence result from it. The other is that the press is the main bastion of truth in documenting what is really going on. It felt like the first option was something you could manifest, but the way the film is shot with taking pictures all the time makes it seem more like the second. The press shows us stuff may not be the most challenging take for anyone to digest, which seems to fit the feel of the movie as well.
So was it at least about how the civil war would really damage the fabric of everything? Well, in avoiding politics it kind of made no real sense why the civil war was actually happening. There were some words thrown around, but nothing that really felt like it truly explained what regime shift people really wanted that would truly sustain such a large mobilization and sustained effort. What it did do was show how you could be a cool journalist on the front lines of a big internal war capturing all these big stories. Also, the war was conclusive with the president losing, which makes starting a civil war seem much cooler. They killed the president! Kind of a pro-war macro and pro-war micro-scale film. I don't think this was intended.
What blew my mind is something that I found out later. Alex Garland, who had previously made Ex Machina and Annihilation, both of which I loved, both wrote and directed this. It is fascinating that someone could write and direct a film for A24, the art hoe film studio, and come up with a vision of an American civil war that is absolutely boneless. Not directed but someone else's ideas, not had a studio outline it but it got jacked or anything like that. This was a vision that was created from start to end by one person, and it is just so flaccid. How? It does look great. The pacing is good. It does have this overall visual delivery that I really enjoy. How did it end up that nothing?
Bonus
World War Z is a book that I really liked that had a terrible film adaptation. Well, it's not a terrible film, it's a fine enough zombie action movie, but it isn't World War Z. It just isn't like the book. We noted that the apocalypse America just looks like a zombie movie, be it deliberately or by association by this point. I couldn't help but think: of a movie about a journalist documenting something relatively impersonally, just relaying experiences as they happened, with great visuals and a really good knack for telling these short stories from all around. This movie could have been an amazing World War Z. The same visuals and overall direction given to the invasion of the white house could have made a phenomenal battle for Yonkers. Instead, it's boneless politics bait. There you go.
The press should be treated like police
Do not talk to them
They are the enemy of the people
Oncle