This post contains massive spoilers for the plot and ending of Civil War (2024), which you should watch!
In the lead up to the release of Alex Garland’s Civil War, producer and distributor A24, as part of their marketing plan, released a map of the United States showcasing the political divisions within the film’s eponymous civil war. Criticism and mockery was directed at the decision to depict California and Texas in an alliance against the federal government, a seemingly unrealistic alliance given the massive political differences between the two states in the real world. While I do think releasing this map was probably a mistake (insofar as it detracts from the underlying themes of the film), this particular criticism somewhat misses the point. Upon watching Civil War, it becomes quite clear that the film is not concerned with the particular machinations that led to this civil war. The film begins right in the thick of it, where there are no clear distinctions between aggressor, victim, defender, just or unjust. As a film, Civil War is less interested in the political perspectives or ideologies of its key players than it is in the human consequences of its conflict.
Civil War is, structurally speaking, a road trip movie. We follow four journalists in their journey across the Not-So-United States towards Washington, D.C in an attempt to secure an exclusive interview with the president (Nick Offerman). Along the way, they will have to document as well as protect themselves from the violence and chaos of the civil war.
The decision to center this film on journalists is in perfect marriage with the decision to background the events that lead up to the civil war. We fully inhabit the perspectives of these journalists, in the sense of being ostensibly objective observers of this conflict, who remain neutral while pursuing truth, but also in the manner in which they are thrust into the thick of battle, and must contend with the fog of war as they chase their scoop at much risk to their personal safety. We see numerous scenes of combat in Civil War, and frequently there is little clarity as to who is fighting whom. Who is winning? Who is losing? Who is the good side? Whose soldiers are better trained or have better equipment? The journalists don’t know, and by extension neither do we. What little truth we can eke out comes from inhabiting the perspectives of these journalists and the horrors of war they document on a daily basis.
What is remarkable abut Civil War though is that even as the film illuminates the value and importance of journalistic work, it by no means ignores the fact that they are human beings. Much of the film is dedicated to examining how these journalists are psychologically affected by their field of work, and how these psychological impacts come to potentially inform or even distort their work.
The impetus for the film’s deadly road trip is the desire of Lee and Joel, two of our four journalists, to secure an interview with the president, who has turned to secrecy and authoritarianism as his government and the states loyal to him are battered on all sides by fighting. The president has refused interviews with the press and shunned all contact with the public, preferring instead to appear only in carefully scripted propaganda broadcasts. If Lee and Joel were to succeed in pushing through the front lines and piercing the president’s veil of secrecy, it would be the scoop of the century. Would this be vital and important journalism? Absolutely. Would this also be an illustrious addition to their careers, a real majestic feather in their caps? Definitely. In their dogged pursuit of this goal through the film, we see the myriad ways these journalists abandon caution and embrace moral compromise for the sake of their art.
Our protagonist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) has had a storied career covering bloody conflicts and atrocities around the world. She’s seen things you people wouldn’t believe. And she’s traumatized by it. Her method of coping is compartmentalizing. The night before they leave for D.C, she experiences vivid flashbacks to particular moments of trauma. She’s not okay, but she tries blocking it out anyway. She has put a wall between her and her feelings. Her objectivity would be her guiding star.
Her friend and colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) is her polar opposite. As their road trip brings them closer to the conflict zones, he grows visibly excited. The thought of the gunfire, the bombs and bloodshed, and the opportunity to document it all, experience it all, it’s clearly what gets him up in the morning.
And it is very exciting! The first battle our journalists document is rich with gunfire, grenades, blood, death. It’s quite the spectacle, for our troupe of journalists, and for us the viewer. At the end of it all, when the blood has been spilled and the smoke from the bombs and guns has cleared, Joel is visibly euphoric, laughing and chatting away. Lee, on the other hand, stands far away, emotionally detached even as she witnesses prisoners of war casually executed.
For all their claims to objectivity, neutrality and independence, things become not so simple in the heat of battle. It’s the suppressing fire of the fighters they embed with who keep them safe. It’s these very same fighters Joel laughs and banters with at the end of it all. How neutral is he really if he’s laughing away with the victors? How much complicity does he have with the killing? The winners Joel is casually bros with are not dressed in typical military fatigues. Curiously, they wear flowery Hawaiian shirts under their bulletproof vests, possibly a reference to the far right extremist boogaloo movement. Is it okay for a journalist like Joel to be perfectly happy hanging out with these guys? To what extent is Joel’s identity as a supposedly neutral journalist merely a means to witness the ‘spectacle’ and horror of war while keeping his hands clean?
How different are we as the viewer of this film? We are enthralled by the spectacle of war in fiction. Do we treat the spectacle of war in reality the same? Calls for violent upheavals and revolution through violence are commonplace now, whether in the attempts and calls for overthrowing the federal government by the far right, or praise for Hamas on social media by the far left shortly after the events of October 7th in Israel.
A fair number of reviews of Civil War have expressed disappointment that the film is not interested in saying much about the politics of today, and that is true. Like much of Garland’s work, Civil War is more interested in asking questions than providing answers, but if there’s one thing it’s absolutely certain about, it’s that war is hell, and we should not want it to happen.
A fair amount of criticism was also directed to a comment made by Alex Garland at a screening of the film at SXSW, seemingly equivocating ‘both sides’ of the political spectrum and their respective claims to moral superiority, but the film makes clear that Garland isn’t some sort of moral relativist. In one of the film’s most memorable scenes. our troupe of journalists run into an unnamed white nationalist militiaman, chillingly portrayed by Jesse Plemons.
In this haunting scene, our journalists find this militiaman dumping bodies, seemingly civilians based on their clothes, into a mass grave. Many of these bodies were of people of color. Held captive beside this mass grave are two journalists, one belonging to the troupe we’ve been following. He asks them, what kind of American are you? The two journalists our troupe encountered leading up to this encounter are murdered in cold blood. They were both Asian, and not ‘American’ by the militiaman’s definition.
The sheer depravity and evil of this militiaman is all we ever learn of him. We do not learn his name or which side he fights for, if any. In the end, it doesn’t matter. In the midst of war, where law and order are but guidelines, the real victors are the sociopaths.
The deadly encounter takes a heavy toll on our journalist troupe, though it weighs most heavily on the two remaining journalists we have not discussed: Jessie and Sammy.
Sammy (Stephen McHinley Henderson, “They cut him out of Dune 2, the motherfuckers” – Alex Garland) is the oldest of the four and a mentor figure to Lee and Joel. In his wisdom, he quite rightfully advised Lee and Joel not to pursue their ambition of securing their presidential interview. Nevertheless, he grudgingly tagged along for a ride to the front lines of the war so that he may report on the evolving conflict.
Of all four journalists, Sammy is perhaps the sanest and wisest. Notably, he is not a photojournalist. It is perhaps this fact, along with his seniority, that immunizes him from the thrill of the spectacle and the reckless ambition necessary to chase the exclusive scoop. His job is to write and report, to reflect on the evolving war with a degree of detachment. It is ultimately his logic and rationality that correctly predicts the danger posed by the white nationalist militiaman, and it is Sammy that eventually saves the day, but not without losing his own life in the process.
Our last journalist, Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), is the newest of the group and not even really a credentialed journalist yet. Through sheer good fortune she is saved by Lee from a suicide bombing, and eventually convinces Joel to allow her to tag along. In multiple ways she is an echo of Lee, who she professes to admire. She begins this journey much like Lee did at the start of her career, innocent and naïve of the dangers she faces and the horrors she is about to witness. She is the cautionary tale of Civil War. Her ambition and her chase of the spectacle and the thrill of it all planting the seeds of her own eventual trauma and moral compromise.
With the death of Sammy, the group’s ambitions begin to unravel. Lee’s mentor has died, the war has become personal for her. The wall between her and her trauma crumbles. Her supposed objectivity has failed her when she needed it most. Perhaps because that detached objectivity was never real in the first place. As the fighting reaches D.C, and she along with it, she can barely hold herself together.
Joel too is left distraught. The thrill and spectacle of the firefight is lost. It’s not so funny when its your own friends with the bullet in them. He falls into nihilism and rage. Where Lee must deal with her new emotions, Joel abandons his. All he has left is the interview, his exclusive scoop. It would be his revenge. His own bullet in his own war.
Jessie again echoes a younger Lee. Sammy’s death is the last trauma Lee can endure, but it is the first trauma Jessie must endure, and like Lee at the start of her career, Jessie begins to steel her heart. She builds a wall around her emotions just as Lee did. Just in time for the invasion of D.C.
The storming of the capitol and the White House is sheer spectacle taken to 11. The fighting is chaotic, loud, powerful and horrifyingly violent. A sensory overload of the highest order. Much praise must be given to the cinematography here. Director Garland, cinematographer Rob Hardy and colorist Asa Shoul have made the interesting and unconventional (but intelligent) choice of filming Civil War digitally and preserving the unabashedly digital look of the footage, avoiding emulations of film grain or warmer color grades meant to evoke the look of analog film. Instead, we see shots with uncanny levels of sharpness and clarity, or purple fringing around high contrast edges, a characteristic fingerprint of digital sensors just as halation is characteristic of analog film.
These visual choices lend the scenes of gunfire, bombings and summary executions a distinctive documentary-like feel, making the spectacle and action we witness all the more grounded and real. This cinematographic choice is made even smarter by the occasional insert shots of black and white film photos taken by Jessie, who unlike Lee, shoots with a film camera. Where the digital look of the movie reminds us of documentaries and cellphone footage of contemporary conflicts, Jessie’s film photos remind us of historic photographs of historic conflicts. The shaky digital video is the truth of the moment, but the film photos are how history will remember it.
It is those film photos that document and memorialize Lee’s final moments. In a moment of recklessness, Jessie rushes out of cover during the storming of the White House to take more photos. Lee’s detached objectivity is gone now. She has lost her mentor, and she has no desire to lose a mentee, so she pushes Jessie away from the line of fire, and ends up taking the bullets instead. In this moment, yet again, Jessie is an echo of Lee. She takes the photos of Lee’s death, and moves on.
As the film draws to its close, our surviving journalists Joel and Jessie are fully embedded with the winning Western Forces (WF), almost functioning as propagandists for them. They follow WF soldiers, obey their instructions and are kept safe by them. They even lead WF soldiers to the president still hiding in the White House and away from the decoy cars (filled with civilians they casually massacre).
As the WF march into the oval office and prepare to execute the president, Joel even commands them to pause. And they listen. After all, these journalists are there to memorialize their stunning victory. He asks for a last quote from the president. His exclusive scoop, all that he has left now that his friends are dead. As the soldier shoot 5.56mm rounds into the president, Jessie shoots 35mm film of them.
The film’s credits roll as Jessie’s final photo of this historic victory fades into view. The WF soldiers stand over the president’s bloodied corpse, smiling and celebrating. It’s reminiscent of photos of the deaths of dictators like Gaddafi, or the photos of torture and abuse out of Abu Ghraib. It is the victorious Western Forces that pave the way for Jessie and Joel to have their historic scoop. It is the Western Forces they have been fully embedded with. This moment was historic and worth documenting, but it’s also a great souvenir for the president’s executioners. How objective and neutral can such a photo of them, celebrating a corpse, really be?
Civil War is a film certain and sure of only a few things. Perhaps rightfully so. After all, it is in the certainty of things that the war between ideas turns into the war between people. Civil War is certain that war is horrible. It is certain that only the most morally repugnant among us desire it and thrive in it. It is certain that war has the power to erode the integrity and identity in even the noblest among us. Beyond these truths, Civil War has only questions. If there is a civil war, how do we respond? What do we do? What can we do? How will we remember it? How will we be remembered? Civil War has no answers for us. Hopefully the journalists will.