Movie Review: Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

 

Western Forces flag from the film Civil War (2024) d. Alex Garland

Movie Review

Civil War (2024)

d. Alex Garland

   I haven't written about movies since I wrapped up my Criterion Collection phase, which lasted a couple years.  One of the things that I noticed, writing about movies on my blog, is that so many people have critical opinions about movies that is pointless to try to add something.  Contrast this to the considerable paucity of opinions about amazing authors like W.G. Sebald or Thomas Bernhard.  The other issue that I noticed writing about movies is that they are such a group production, starting with the planning of the shooting of the film, followed by the actual shooting of the film, followed by the post-shooting production of the film to the marketing and distribution, to write about a movie is not to write about an individual work of art but, largely speaking, a massively capitalized financial endeavor undertaken at the behest of a multi-national corporation. 

   Rare is the film that inspires me to state an opinion, but Civil War, directed by Alex Garland, is one of those films.  I am a huge fan of Garland which largely stems from me learning that he was the author of The Beach before he started working in film.  Starting in 2010 he directed a series of films that began to establish him as a significant creative voice- beyond the impact of the writing of The Beach and the film of the book, which he also directed and was released in 2010.  In 2014 Ex Machina was released. I didn't see it for years- I think it must have been on Netflix when I finally did, but there is no questioning that it is a really interesting movie. In 2018 he adapted Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, which didn't perform very well with audiences or critics, but I happen to think it an amazing movie, personally.  In 2020 there was season one of Devs, which I watched and enjoyed, again I thought Devs again demonstrated that Garland was working with a distinct, impressive, artistic vision.

   Civil War really delivers on this artistic promise in a way that I believe is not being fully appreciated by the discourse, which seems to be driven on either the message or non-message sent by centering the press in the narrative.  What the discussion over this artistic decision lacks is the literary context of the story of the film.  Garland has crafted a picaresque, or tour of horrors, that relates clearly to artistic antecedents extending to the Odyssey and older.  His choice of war photography/journalism as his vehicle is the only option available to him, or anyone else, to tell this story.

   Compare the story of a contemporary Civil War to the experience of Goya, who, between 1808 and 1814, toured Spain to document the Napoleonic Invasion in a series of 82 etchings.  They are currently on display at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, apparently for the first time ever (?) and I had them in mind when I saw Civil War because I'd visited the museum the day before and seen the exhibition.   Goya, following the practice of the time, simply traveled around Spain as a gentleman and took sketches which he then turned into etchings.  The etchings are frank and intimate, the war photography of their time.  Back then, people can, and often did, set up picnics and viewing parties for battles on nearby hills- it was a practice that extended through the start of the Civil War in the United States, and it was a different mode of warfare.

   Garland, seeking to tell a contemporary story, needs contemporary tellers, people present to document the horror.  Each scene in Civil War is a different stop on the tour of horrors, meant to illustrate a different aspect of the overall message, which is that war is a horror.  There should be no issue regarding what Garland's hidden message is when it is right there in plain sight.  That message is enough, and it's a message that has been delivered more or less consistently, interspersed with the opposite opinion, that war is the highest glory of man, for thousands of years.

  I can understand why a lay viewer might not LIKE Civil War- there is plenty not to like for a viewer who is just out for a Sunday matinee at the local AMC.  My partner, for example, won't even see the film for her (justified and accurate) belief that the violence contained in the film is too much.  If you are a viewer looking for a really wide scope battle picture you are going to be disappointed by many of the slow and intimate scenes that largely revolve around dialogue.  If you have strong political beliefs of one kind or another you might take issue with what you might think are the hidden sympathies of the filmmaker.   These are all valid negative lay opinions about the film as a popcorn, matinee movie at the multiplex. 

  I can't understand why a critic would say Civil War is anything other than a great movie.  I believe every critical review I've surveyed fails to engage with the historical context of the artistic form- picaresque- that Garland is utilizing here.   Picaresque is not an art form with a moral imperative, it is from the 18th century and it is meant to simply usher the reader along through the literary equivalent of a series of pictorial engravings.  Each scene is Civil War is an actual "scene," the visual equivalent of a moving Goya etching from Los Desastres de la Guerra.  If you don't understand that connection from the past to the present, you don't understand the film.