review: CIVIL WAR is one hell of a journalism film

*Warning! This article contains major and detailed spoilers for CIVIL WAR. Please don’t read it unless you’ve seen it.

Back in the middle of April, A24 released a poster for their newest film, CIVIL WAR, which depicted a map of the ravaged United States of America. The green one-sheet functioned as an explanation of the reality the film shows as much as it was meant to generate interest by rousing controversy.

Even since before it premiered at South by Southwest, the film was shrouded in controversy and the subsequent promotional tour only worsened that. From questions about if it was wise to release a film about a fictional war in an year when Americans will have to go vote for the president to if Alex Garland, who is British, knows anything about American politics and everything in between, CIVIL WAR led to many thinkpieces, but also commercial success (it topped the American box office for two weeks straight).

But for all the chatter about the politics it depicts, CIVIL WAR is actually not a war film. Instead, it’s a journalism roadtrip action film that just happens to take place during a war. What’s more, the film functions both as a love letter to journalists as well as a damnation of them, carefully mixing admiration for their courage with criticism of what they’d be willing to do for their own big moment and a refusal to interact with their subjects without the shield of the camera lens.

The film follows four journalists — photographers Lee (Kirsten Dunst, in her second best performance behind only FARGO season two) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) and reporters Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) — as they make their way through a ravaged country to go interview and photograph the president of the United States. As we find out early on, the unnamed president, who is serving his third term in a career defined by disbanding the FBI and calling for airstrikes on Americans, hasn’t granted an interview in fourteen months. Lee and Joel want to penetrate the White House’s iron walls that the president has built around him in order to record him.

It’s a mighty task, but one that doesn’t scare the hardened journalists or Jessie, who is inexperienced, but wants to emulate both of the Lees she idolised — the film’s Smith and Miller, the legendary photographer who worked for Vogue during the Second World War. Right before Lee saves Jessie from a suicide bombing, the younger photographer marvels that the woman who took her aside is Lee Smith herself. We don’t know much about Lee Smith yet, but Jessie’s reaction betrays that she’s a big deal since she’s more fascinated by having been saved by her idol than aching from the bat a police officer smacked across her face. When the two women meet again later that same evening, Jessie fangirls some more over Lee, thanking her for saving her life and, most importantly, expressing her admiration for her.

That Jessie makes such a big deal over Lee early on is important to the film’s core which is the stripping of journalists’ humanity the more they spend time in warzones and the more fame they achieve. As impressed as Jessie is with both Lees resumes, she is also not aware of the baggage that comes with the recognition. Lee Smith has become a shell of a person, someone who struggles with PTSD and is haunted by the atrocities she has photographed throughout her career. When she finds out the next morning that Joel has allowed Jessie to tag along with them on their trip, Lee is not happy; in her eyes, Jessie is too young and this is a dangerous job after all. But Joel and Sammy both remind her that she, too, was once a young, fresh photographer who had no idea what war photojournalism was truly like. Lee herself says at one point that she had hoped her photographs were sending out a warning to not do what she is doing. She calls herself, Joel, and Sammy mistakes for having followed the path of journalism. She often dissociates*. Lee sees herself in Jessie and wants to protect not just Jessie from becoming the traumatised and hurt person Lee has become, but also her younger self.

(*This is represented by the chromatic aberrations the film uses. It’s a beautiful effect that only underlines how fucked up Lee has become after decades of photographing various atrocities in more warzones that she should have. Naturally, it gets passed down to Jessie at the end of the movie.)

But even so, would Lee give back her life, her status as the youngest person in the Magnum Photos or the authorship of the famous Antifa massacre photo* for a history devoid of risking her life in the name of journalism? As Sammy reminds her in the Stepfordesque sniper-controlled town, a quiet life wouldn’t have suited them; ‘we would have gotten bored’ he concludes.

(*How embarrassing that a film I like uses this in its dialogue. It’s true, I have no taste!)

Lee knows he’s right. This conversation echoes the moment when she tells Jessie that her parents are hiding in Colorado, pretending like the country isn’t in shambles. She delivers the line resigned; that’s what they chose, but she couldn’t have done the same. The reason for that is because Lee’s biggest love is journalism just as it is Jessie’s and Sammy’s and Joel’s. For them, the package the job offers them — the adrenaline, the rush, the fear, the danger — is too seductive to be turned down. One could say that getting the truth is another important element in that package, but it gets eclipsed by another aspect, perhaps the most important one: the immortality of fame.

There’s four important topics to discuss here: Lee’s Antifa massacre photo, Jessie photographing Lee’s death, the film’s last line, and the final shot. All these moments not only parallel each other, but are biggest signs that the film is about journalism and the nature of journalists more than it is about the war.

When Jessie mentions Lee’s famous photograph that made her into a superstar in the photojournalism world, it’s clear Jessie wants that, too. All journalists want that one shot or interview that defines not just their careers, but a moment in time. How else can you achieve immortality if you don’t have The Scoop? And isn’t this what the four main characters want? Why else would they travel hundreds of miles to a dangerous heart if not to get that one moment that will grant them just that?

That Antifa massacre photo granted Lee immortality — how many other young journalists came up to her to mention she inspired them; how many people have that photograph framed to look at it as a lesson in history –, but so does Jessie’s photos of her death. Lee finds herself both behind and in front of the camera, photographer and subject. That her life ends with a heroic gesture that is captured on camera (her profession of choice) is poetic enough, but it also links back to early on in the film when Jessie asks her if she would photograph Jessie’s death. Lee answers ‘What do you think’ insinuating that yes, she would. This also ties to Lee’s own words that their job is to take the shot and let others answers the questions; as photojournalists, they can never ask the questions or it will eat them up.

Jessie could have not taken the photographs, but she knew she couldn’t not take them. She had to report this moment — not just the death of her mentor, but the death of an iconic photojournalist in the White House, too — for history to remember. After she’s done with the pictures, she takes a moment to grasp what happened before going with Joel to photograph the president’s death (which Lee wanted to do*). They can’t linger for too long**; they have to do the job and afterwards deal with everything else***. ‘We record, so other people ask (questions)’ Lee tells Jessie in the car.

(*This parallels to the shot early on in the film of Lee taking a photograph of the president giving a speech on the television. It’s the closest she gets to getting the shot she wanted.)

(**If I think too much about how Joel dealt with Lee’s death, I become feral. I have written a backstory for their characters in my mind which begins with them meeting as young journalists, having a romantic relationship for a while, and then breaking up when they realised they’re better off as career partners than romantic ones. Even so, they still have more love in their heart for each other than they have for anybody and almost anything — journalism is their true love and what kept them in each other’s lives.)

(***I’ve seen some people wonder why didn’t Joel and/or Jessie stop to mourn Lee after her death. For the same reason why Jessie didn’t put her camera down when Lee collapsed from the bullets lodged in her body. They got so close to the finish line, they had to pass it, get The Scoop, and then mourn. When Sammy died, there was still a while to go before DC, so they could take their time with it. But with the troops ready to assassinate the president, Joel and Jessie had to finish the job and then mourn Lee’s death. It’s the loss of humanity as they chase fame.)

Jessie’s photograph is the final nail in the coffin that is her humanity. She spends the entire DC sequence running around as all hell breaks loose, taking photographs and endangering her life. Several times she has to be pulled back by soldiers as she puts herself in harm’s way. This is in contrast with Lee suffers a PTSD attack during the run-up to the White House. Lee may have years’ worth of experience, but it’s just that what breaks her during the lead-up.

It’s obvious from the moment when Jessie asks Lee if she’d photograph Jessie’s death how the film will end*. As one photographer rises, the other one has to fall. It’s important to note that Lee’s death comes right after she gets her humanity back and right as Jessie loses hers. Lee may have spent most of the film a hardened woman, but it’s the human nature of sacrificing herself that brings her down**. Meanwhile, Jessie’s loss of humanity is what pushes her past the finish line and onto the pantheon of iconic photographers.

(*It may be predictable, but it’s so well done. Lee’s death sends goosebumps down my spine every single time.)

(**Her PTSD attack and sacrifice are also betrayed by the moment when she deletes the photograph of Sammy’s dead body from her camera, a moment that is mirrored in Jessie photographing Lee’s death.)

During the build-up to entering the White House, as Jessie runs around like a kid on a playground, Joel protects and guides Lee during her PTSD attack. It’s a lovely, but heartbreaking touch only underlines how important they are for each other (romantically or not). They’ve been career partners for ages and they were supposed to achieve the greatest scoop of their lifetimes together.

Even so, it does make sense that Joel ignores Lee’s dead body at first, instead telling Jessie to come with him and get the shot Lee couldn’t. Sad as the death of his creative partner may be (especially since it followed the one of their own mentor), Joel is aware he has to finish the job, with or without her. The soldiers already got the president; he can’t miss his chance to get in the history books. The president’s death is not just for himself or for Jessie, but it’s for Lee and Sammy, as well.

Lee’s death* also perfectly shows Jessie’s growth from the girl who was too scared to take the photograph of the two thieves who were left hanging and bloodied up early on in the film to a great photographer. But even so, as tragic and even iconic as Lee’s death is, Jessie’s career won’t be defined by it but by the final shot of the film. In the Oval Office, the Western Forces capture the president and execute him as she takes the photograph. The credits of the film roll on the developing photograph she takes of the troops posing with the man’s body.

(*Some have complained that Lee’s death was sloppily done or that she had planned to commit suicide by jumping in front of a shooter, but I disagree. Though the scene is shot in slow-motion, Lee was probably not quick enough to make the decision to duck. After all, she had just experienced a PTSD attack that could have left her mind hazy.)

That moment is what makes her Lee’s true heir and the newest superstar in the world of photojournalism. Through that photo, Jessie has achieved immortality herself. It will be the picture everybody will talk about when it comes to her forever. It’s easy to imagine an older Jessie, meeting younger photojournalists who are gobsmacked by her the way she was when she first met Lee.

In interviews, Alex Garland has compared the last shot to various photographs taken throughout history:

‘There are many photos that exist — it could be law enforcement, but I think you particularly get it with military — where they kill someone they’ve been trying to get and then they take that photo. There’s a famous one from when Pablo Escobar was shot. So, like many other things in the film, it was a commentary on things that actually happen’ he told Vulture in an interview.

To quote the same piece, written by Matthew Jacobs, ‘they’re grinning like they’ve just won a game. The picture reads as a slight wink: No one can resist a good photo op’. It makes sense that they’re smiling. Not only have they taken down the president, but their grinning faces will forever be remembered by history. That photo will come to define the Civil War just as much as Lee’s famous photograph did the Antifa massacre. They’ve, too, have achieved immortality.

And then there’s the final lines of them film. As the Western Forces drag the president to execute him, Joel stops them. ‘I need a quote’ he tells the president who can only stammer ‘Don’t let them kill me’ out. Joel, disgusted, but not surprised with the line, replies ‘Yeah, that’ll do’ and lets the troops finish their execution.

These lines of dialogue will define the Civil War and Joel’s career as much as Jessie’s and Lee’s famous photographs will. The window for an interview with the president closed right when the team arrived in Charlottesville. At this point, after all the bloodshed, the authoritarianism, the deaths of his mentor and partner, and with the president moments from execution, all Joel can do is get a quote that will be remembered for decades to come.

It’s important to remember that the president hadn’t given an interview in fourteen months. He sends messages to the country’s citizens, but he hasn’t offered access to the press in over a year. It’s easy to understand why. Journalists like Joel have the issue to probe their subject and ask uncomfortable questions and the president doesn’t want that. It’s better to go on the air and say that they are close to victory, one many are already calling the greatest military victory in history, than to have someone ask questions which could do more harm.

Somewhere at the start of the film, Sammy offers some questions for Joel to ask the president were he to actually interview him. The first question – concerning any regrets the president might have had during his third term in office – is too soft; the second – about the president having disbanded the FBI – is worded in a passive-aggressive manner; the third – about the president’s policy of using air strikes against citizens of the country – is the winning one. By the time Joel gets to the White House, the time for questions has passed. But even so, this conversation is important as it shows how hard, but vital it is to find the right balance of a question.

It’s clear that the president doesn’t like journalists which makes his final line much more unreal. As the troops are holding him down, he answers Joel’s need for a quote by begging him ‘don’t let them kill me’. After years (since it’s easy to assume the last interview that he gave was just the final drop) of contempt for journalists, the president is begging one to spare his life.

In his final moments, the president is a coward, one who has lost not just power, but also time. Joel could not save him even if he could, but the president doesn’t care; he will try his luck anyway. He is desperate enough for one final unsuccessful plea to a member of the opposition. To quote that same Vulture article*: ‘It’s something of a punch line: the almighty autocrat begging a journalist he’d recently treated as an enemy to save his life.’

(*I highly recommend reading this piece, by the way: https://www.vulture.com/article/behind-civil-war-vicious-white-house-end-scene.html.)

His final words — ‘Don’t let them kill me’ — will define him. He couldn’t even die with a sliver of dignity; in his final moments, the president was still a coward (emphasis on ‘still’). No matter how he may have been remembered when he was alive, his choice of final words made sure that he will forever be a joke to those who made it out of the war.

Joel, too, will be defined by the president’s final line — he’s the one who got it out of him –, but also by his own. What else could he even say to anything the president would have said other than ‘Yeah, that’ll do’? With the tease of an interview as well as a refusal from the president to own up to his actions, Joel’s final line is the only response that he could have come up. It’s also an acknowledgement that it’s a good enough quote to be printed out next to Jessie’s photograph.

But another important aspect of the ending is that Joel tells the president ‘I need a quote’. He knows not only the important moment he’s living through, but as a journalist, he wants that one quote that will define him and the man’s presidency. Like Jessie’s photographs of Lee’s and the president’s deaths, Joel’s need for a quote only further expresses that, at the end of the day, these characters wanted The Scoop that would bring them immortality. It’s why he ignored Lee’s body, choosing to walk inside the Oval Office before the troops silenced the president forever.

Lee spends most of the film with her faith in journalism lost. It’s not hard to imagine that she would have quickly regained it had she been the one to step into the Oval Office with Joel instead of Jessie. But Joel and Jessie still have their faith in journalism (and less humanity) than Lee does. In Charlottesville, Jessie tells Lee that she had never felt more scared, but also alive as she felt in those days. Joel is an adrenaline junkie who gets off on the gunshots he sees in the night sky. This isn’t quite faith in journalism as much as it’s the thrill that comes with danger and the seductive nature of fame. Jessie may be a Lee in the making, but she’s just as much like Joel since they both love the drug that is adrenaline and the teasing nature of danger.

Still, there is a difference between a journalist like Joel and Sammy and a photojournalist like Lee and Jessie. A photojournalist’s job is only to document while everybody else gets to ask the questions. A journalist asks their subject the questions, digging into their motives and psyche. But at one point, there is an overlap between these two jobs. Journalists’ works get discussed just as much as photojournalists’ does; people debate a photograph as much as they do an interview. Why did someone answer a question that way? Are they lying? What’s the history of this photograph? What’s outside the frame? What can we learn from the subject in front of us?

By documenting, journalists become the parent of something bigger than them. Why get a quote or take a photograph if not for the discussions that they will birth? There is something attractive about being the person who got what everybody was either looking to get (achieve immortality) or to see (discussions). At one point during the ending, a rival journalist taunts Lee to not take the money shot (photograph the president’s death) before him. Whoever makes it first past the finish line will get the glory. Nobody remembers the second person on the moon, but everybody knows who Neil Armstrong is.

When Jessie first sees the White House, she can’t betray her shock and excitement, intoning ‘It’s so fucking close’ as she resumes taking photographs of the battle around her. Naturally Jessie finds the proximity of the White House so exciting; it’s one of the most famous buildings in the whole world, but now it’s the heart of hell as well as a symbol for something that doesn’t exist anymore. Even if she doesn’t think the president is inside – which she doesn’t; it’s Lee who deduces that he didn’t run away with one of the cars, but he’s still inside the building –, it’s still an impressive sight; the former home for so many other presidents now stands as a monument to a coward.

Many have criticised the film’s lack of a political stance, but personally, that only helps it if you view it as what it is: a journalism film. By turning its lens on the characters instead of the war, the movie presents how indifferent the media can become to extremes as well as the desire to achieve fame above all. Lee and Sammy may have died, but they will live on forever through their works. Joel and Jessie are superstars now having achieved what Lee had achieved with her Antifa massacre photograph.

When I first watched the film, I felt Garland was a bit of a coward for refusing to get into it more*, but after a rewatch and with everything going on in the world, I realised it’s actually better off this way. All we know is that the nameless president is a dictator and like all the dictators Sammy mentions earlier on, he gets a summary execution. Any person in power, be they left leaning or right wing or anything in between, can cause more harm than help their country.

(*I think the film would have suffered had it been set during a real-life war. Most of these conflicts, in particular American ones, have been well-documented and they cast too big of a shadow for them to be properly used as background fodder. By creating a fictional war that gets vaguely explained, Garland is able to properly focus on the film’s real subjects which are his journalists. The film already suffered too much from A24’s war-based marketing when the conflict doesn’t matter, just the desensitization of journalists to the horrors they record.)

Much has been joked about the film saying California and Texas are in cahoots; one’s a blue state, the other a red one. But by making these two enemies into allies, Garland calls the idea that politics matter to the film the most a joke. Sure, he could explain how these states ended up on the same side of the war, but by refusing to do so, Garland only enforces the idea that it doesn’t matter. California and Texas are allies; how they got here doesn’t matter as much as the absurdity of the situation*.

(*Other aspects of the film that express this are the Christmas fair scene – the snipers who don’t know who is shooting them, just that they’re shooting each other – and everything about the Stepfordesque town).

The true danger isn’t in how or why, but in what resulted afterwards which just happens to be power. Texas and California are two of the biggest states in the US. Even though they’re enemies, if the president (whose politics are very vague) angered both of them somehow, it would make more sense for them to be united in the war. By combining their powers, they have the best shot of taking down the president (which just happens in the end).

But California and Texas aren’t the only ones who want power. Above all, politicians want it, too, even more than they desire a better world. It’s very easy to be corrupted. We don’t know how the president was elected; we just hear some of the awful things he has done. What exactly would it do if the film delved into politics more? Absolutely anybody, if given enough power, can be corrupted, be they on the right, center, or left side of the political spectrum. And just that way, anybody who may have started off promising and fighting for more can become the country’s biggest nightmare.

It was a stroke of unfortunate luck that CIVIL WAR premiered during one of the most politically charged times in history. The world is rapidly falling into fascism as several extreme-right-wing parties are gaining power. Tougher anti-immigration laws are passed, basic human rights are stripped, and extremism is on the rise. The US, too, is going through one of the darkest periods in its history. Some have criticised the film for refusing to spell out its political ideology, but it’s hard not to feel jaded right now. After four years of a democrat president (under whom students were arrested for protesting pro-Palestine and Roe got overturned) which followed four years of a republican president (whom built a wall to keep immigrants away and tried to steal an election), how can voters not be disillusioned with their choices for President*?

(*As someone who is not american, I, too, feel disillusioned with my own country’s elections. Hell, the current state of the political world in general depresses me. Who will take care of us?)

While I can’t speak for its prophetic nature, the film does accurately present a growing fear. The Jesse Plemons scene has been mentioned (and memed because of course it has been) a lot on social media and dissected. It’s not even that surprising if you’ve paid attention to the history of authoritarianism or looked in the right places. ‘What kind of American are you?’ is not funny, for starters, but with anti-immigration sentiments growing, it feels taken right out of real life. That his character kills the foreigners (both men of colour) with such calm right next to a mass grave, well, that just feels like a more extreme, but scarily probable future.

That character also doesn’t respect journalists; in fact, he seems to despise them. It’s clear why; journalists put the truth out. But the difference between him and the gas station attendant who shows Jessie the hanging men is that Plemons’ character has awareness. The gas station attendant gladly poses with the men as if they’re his trophies; Plemons’ character would flatly refuse to be photographed as the Hades of the pit because he doesn’t want to be stopped. When someone mentions that he doesn’t want to be seen doing what he’s doing, it’s not because of shame, but fear of losing the mad power he has. The gas station attendant wants fame more which is why he accepts Lee’s request for a photograph; Plemons’ character wants the power of continuing his racist and xenophobic reign.

The gas station attendant will live forever through that photograph; Plemons’ character doesn’t want that. He wants something more which is power. He’s a clear mirror of the president whose antics — disbanding the FBI, airstriking American civilians, others not mentioned — have placed a bounty on his head. Plemons’ character knows that without the evidence, be it photographic, audio, or written, he can’t be pushed down from the throne. It’s ironic, then, that he does die in the end when Sammy drives over him to save Lee, Joel, and Jessie.

It’s this dislike for fame that Plemons’ character has (if we believe Sammy’s reading of him which I do) that makes him the most dangerous character in the film. The president may have been the reason why the country went to hell, but he gave free reign to Plemons’ character (and others like him) to continue what he started (kill random civilians). If the characters of the film hadn’t bumped into him, Plemons’ character would have continued his killing spree, burying his victims in mass graves. That’s real power, the one that comes with the anonymity.

I’ve watched CIVIL WAR several times now and each time I found myself enthralled by the film. Everything I didn’t like the first time, I liked the second one and everything I liked the first time, I loved the second one. It is a major achievement, a film that, unfortunately, resonates during these politically charged times, but might become even more relevant as time goes on*.

(*Hopefully not, but sadly, I wouldn’t be surprised).

It’s also a technical feast. The sound and picture editing are stunning; the cinematography is gorgeous; the score and soundtrack* choices have been on repeat for days now for me. The last twenty minutes make up one of the most electric sequences I have seen in my life and gave me an adrenaline rush that lasted me for hours. It’s an incredible action film as much as it’s a great journalism drama.

(*I can understand why some people were turned off by the movie’s needle drops. Personally speaking, I found them to add to the film. The last song in the film, especially, is one of my favourite needle drops in a long time.)

At the end of the day, that’s what CIVIL WAR is: a journalism film. It’s absolutely not a war film; the central conflict is only a backdrop for the film’s real purpose which is to present one hell of a journalism film. It both celebrates and criticizes people in this line of work, people who would do anything to not just uncover the truth, but to become immortal. There is a reason why the film ends with the shot Jessie takes; it’s the defining shot of a presidency and a civil war that ruined a country.