To be honest, I went to the movies because I was an old grumpy guy. civil war Ready to write a malicious review.People told me to go see it, some of them told me to go see it private ryanI regretted it. Not necessarily because it was too violent, but because the filmmakers envisioned an America clearly disconnected from reality, with shock clamps attached and power turned off while raising millions of dollars for the “treatment” provided. This is because he has taken it upon himself to turn it to the maximum.
There’s no doubt that they’re trying to warn me of the horrors of violence as they bleed onto the screen. civil war They will also try to find new ways to pander, to arrogant, to simply abandon cinema as an art form, and to try to compensate for the inability of yet another stupid American who can’t handle Wagner. But since this is a political publication and director Alex Garland claims his film is inherently political, I justified sneaking into Manville’s cinema as a professional obligation. Did.
In the semi-dark theater sat several old birds with beards, walking sticks, Vietnam veteran hats and solemn, exhausted faces. The three of us waited for the movie to start, as the deepening darkness and the noise that sounded like a Hercules jet landing on a skull suddenly made the place seem like the trenches of a bad dream. .
civil war Of course, it starts with the predictable Gore shower stall, and then expands from a broken stopper to feeling like you’ve been blanketed, shoveled, dug up, and bulldozed into a celluloid version of Antonin Artaud. until it becomes cruel theater. An avalanche of reviews poured in, many of them dealing with the inevitable avalanche of films, with critics questioning Garland’s claim to have made a political film. In his public statements, the director sometimes lashes out at interviewers who accuse him of failing to draw a line between right and left. civil war Unable to “take a stand”.
The director argues that the real battle, not only in America but also in his native Britain and other countries, is not left versus right, but between moderates and extremists. I heard him say this in a PBS interview before going to see his film, but in footage that primarily focuses on an interaction in an SUV between four war correspondents, there’s no evidence of this dynamic. I couldn’t find much.
It is against the backdrop of Armageddon that dramatic divisions emerge most consistently, harshly, and urgently. civil war It’s about the characters played by (New Jersey!) Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny. In the end, this film is really not only about the gulf between our generations (between those who primarily interact with machines and those who first interact with other beings and pay the price); It is also a tragedy fundamentally about the gulf. Among the main characters. While he reluctantly accepts the responsibility of mentoring Dunst, a veteran combat photographer who is just starting out as a professional, he struggles to suppress his own humanity while being conscious of the end of the world. In other words, he is trying to suppress his revulsion at the massacre and his empathic urge to do more than simply document the deaths. – As the harsh conditions worsen, she makes her decision to teach her trade to the next generation. That deal, by definition, involves a desensitization to violence and a part of herself that Dunst obsessively tries to hide: a true friend, a caring parent, feelings beyond that of a reporter whose maternal instincts simply file away. It is necessary to definitively overwrite the existence of human beings.
As an adolescent, she seems to have an innate aversion to the terror that befalls the group, but under Dunst’s guidance she gradually regains her confidence and takes the plunge and begins taking photographs. “This is a great shot,” the tough Dunst tells the kid at one point. When she looks at it, it’s a deeply disturbing photo reminiscent of 1966’s Life Magazine’s “Reaching Out.” Even as she descends into the abyss of indifference (which, of course, has the double benefit of being a job in itself; documenting the carnage is at least a form of compassion, like caring about the end of America). , but at times the child tries to engage with the more human side of the teacher. But Dunst knows she’s walking a delicate line. In the world that Spaeny occupies, the virtues of compassion, empathy, and indulging in drug time that see little more than the opportunity to photograph acts of violence will not contribute to the survival of young women, let alone their professional survival. Such an attitude will only disrupt the work and will probably kill her, or at least cause her to prematurely collapse psychologically.
Nowhere in the midst of madness does Garland attempt to make sense of the trauma of a broken America. Nowhere does he attempt a focused dialectic that we could describe as follows. Political. He himself documents the chaos and extremism in our society running wild. For example, in a scene where the president is rehearsing his pacification speech as the country falls apart, he hints at the gulf between political fiction and fact. In another episode, he talks about what he thinks about a racist weirdo who decided to murder two reporters because of their ethnicity. These signal the beginnings of a political perspective that was never developed. Again, Garland’s film features shocked adrenaline-addicted road jockeys as “moderates” filing reports for a nation that no longer reads the news in the midst of an extremist insurgency. Unless you assume that, I see no evidence that moderates are trying to make a stand. . To put it simply, it’s stretching.
Even at its most cynical, pandering to the political correctness of the times, or overly aware of the political instability of the times, this film manages to be political without causing riots and mass shootings. Since we can’t do that, we rely only on formats that are clearly likely to sell. Our failed culture spews a beautifully packaged hodgepodge of over-the-top profanity and shocking violence. Even scarier than more bloodshed and bloodshed is our fear that politics is only contributing to the worsening of the current divisive situation.
No, no one painted the true political picture that was John Frankenheimer. seven days in maymore relevant to today and more daring civil war, Garland nevertheless treats the relationships of Dunst and Spaney, in their 40s and 20s, respectively, in a committed dramatic arc, with real cathartic power, and their intergenerational “civil war” is the core of his films. This naked war exists at the core of Dunst himself, between those trained to record and those who crave performance, those who absorb and sublimate, and those who seek the only authentic act. , a conflict between humans who have been trained to dehumanize. A person whose humanity is struggling to breathe in a body covered in circumstances and lies and lime.
To be sure, the divide in Garland’s film is not left versus right. He’s not even about moderates versus extremists. It’s about survival at the expense of empathy, and about working as a shooting (be it with a camera or a gun, in the most emotionally detached way possible) rather than empathy as a key form of self-discovery. As desensitization to violence accelerates, Lee’s tragic flaw is her humanity, and why this prosthetic instrument of modern warfare, the triumph of our machine selves over the all-too-human humans, is unnecessarily. Do we give imperfection to a child who bends his upper arms in obedience? -Past of suffering?
In the end, what do we give our children, in the name of keeping the spark of humanity alive, something civilized close to deep emotion, or the tools to embrace and attack a difficult way of life? Including and communicating difficulties? Disturbing your feelings?
That’s the civil war at the center. civil war.
It’s not political, it’s psychological.
But at their core, the two are definitively inseparable.
Because democracy itself is based on the concept of the demos or the people, which depends on the depth of our understanding.
That’s something. Probably a start.
Does anyone have a different view?
I have a hobby.
As I was typing in a coffee shop, I ran into a friend who asked me if I’d recommend the movie. I don’t know if I can recommend it to anyone. It’s too disturbing, too vivid a mirror, heaped on the bonfire of our precarious times, to be sure it accomplishes anything.
Does it make you think?
Yes, I think so.
I’m trying to involve my cousin on the topic of civil war, I sent him a text asking if he had seen the movie. He is a Desert Storm veteran and former firefighter who responded to the Department of Defense during 9/11. Now, he helps first responders deal with injuries. He hasn’t seen it and has no intention of seeing it. “I tend to take it easy these days and limit the trauma porn in my life,” he replies while treating another client who clearly needs help. His writing strikes me as a very decent response, very balanced and reassuring, especially insofar as this tough guy interacts with the next generation. To be fair, civil war By Alex Garland I wouldn’t have asked.
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