Early in Garland's fourth (and according to him, last) film, a bomb explodes in New York. Amidst the eerie silence, a hardcore battlefield photographer named Lee (Kirsten Dunst) calmly takes photos of fresh corpses. Behind her, a newcomer named Jesse (Cailee Spaeney) takes pictures of Lee taking pictures of the dead, and of course behind Jesse, Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy are the two Photographing images of women. There is a distance of three lens lengths between these fears and us onlookers who want to see America fall.
Everyone who participates in that chain will claim that they are documenting atrocities for our benefit. Lee had hoped that the horrific footage from her early career – a montage of executions in other countries' wars that cuts in eerily startling slow motion – would warn her country to keep the peace. Admitted. Obviously, that didn't work. Perhaps Garland naively wants the same thing, which is why he avoids the real-world polarization behind this conflict and makes sure his brutal warnings are noticed by as many Americans as possible. right. Garland removed demographic patterns such as age, race, class, gender, and creed from all background players. One fatal conflict is between two women of color who appear to be about the same age. You don't know which side wants your loyalty (and, let's be honest, neither one deserves it). The only words we recognize, a reference to Lee's groundbreaking photographs of what has been called the “Antifa Massacre,” pass by too quickly, and Garland is a reference to the anti-fascist massacre. It was only later that I realized that I had not made it clear whether I had been murdered or committed a massacre.
Garland does not explore how this war started, how long it has been going on, or whether it is worth fighting. The film, like Dunst's Lee and her longtime colleagues Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), is ruthlessly and deliberately curious about combatants and victims. There is. As Lee says, the moral questions about the photographs should be asked by those who view her photographs, but even such theoretical observers are not considered in the film. (In contrast, 20 Days in Mariupol, which won the Oscar for best documentary this year, is also about a photographer in a conflict zone, abandoning the weight of the story behind the desperation to obtain powerful images.) Ta. outside.) Looking at Dunst's weary gaze and welded grimace with the same calm that Lee gives to her subjects, you wonder when was the last time she made herself feel anything? I can't even imagine what it was like.
Still, thanks to the blinders Garland welds into the story, it moves forward with gusto. This is a lean, brutal film about the ethics of filming violence. This is a predicament that anyone with a smartphone in hand can find themselves in during a crisis. This is also the predicament Garland and other directors with big ideas and big scares find themselves in when they want to tell a shocker something really bad without having too much fun with the sadistic thrills. Garland's first three films, Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men, delve into artificial intelligence, environmental collapse, and sexual assault, some of which are more than others. Some were convincing. In Civil War, there are no patriotic ideals about what this country once stood for. The closest thing to an invocation of democracy is when a hotel concierge tells Mr. Lee that given the sporadic power outages, he has the freedom to choose between risking a ride in the elevator or climbing the 10 flights of stairs. , it's a funny gag.
Much of the film is spent with Lee, Jesse, Joel, and Sammy taking a detour from Manhattan to Washington in a beat-up white van. Gangsters compete with competitors for footage of the president. Set to an unsettling punk rock soundtrack, the price to pay for the money: a bottle of vodka, filthy clothes worn for days on end, and growing doubts about whether your press badge still serves as protection. comes to mind. Garland has a clear goal in mind. Newcomer Jesse has to get rid of his weaknesses (which Spaeney did brilliantly). Meanwhile, veteran Lee must redeem her own weaknesses. But it's hard to buy Dunst's unflappable pro, who has to drag his bulletproof vest around like a meowing kitten by the scruff of his neck.
Sometimes movies make us look foolish. There was a lot of uproar over a line in the trailer in which a soldier with a rifle (Jesse Plemons) asks a journalist: Kindness Are you one of the Americans? But when you read the context, it turns out that the beast is asking Joel, played by Maura, if he's Central American or South American. (Joel replies, “Florida.”) The bully is actually “just” a xenophobe. It's a made-up story that makes it look like Garland is nervously changing the subject. But even when suggesting that humans are more likely to tear each other apart over petty grievances than sincerely defending some kind of principle, the film manages to feel deeply poetically true. many. In a dream-like scene, the team comes under sniper fire at an abandoned winter carnival. No one knows who is shooting, and exhausted strangers shrug their shoulders as they hide behind plastic penguins and plaster Santa Clauses. Never.
R. At area theaters. Contains strong violent content and bloody/disturbing images and language throughout. 109 minutes.