Review: Civil War

An absolutely brutal depiction of photojournalism in the midst of an underexplored conflict

I met up with some friends to see Alex Garland's Civil War in IMAX on the Thursday evening before its wide release in the U.S. As a fan of Annihilation, The Beach, and Ex Machina, I thought I was in for a timely tale of American democracy gone wrong. Seeing Nick Offerman in the previews as a Trumpian presidential figure only piqued my interest even more—as a devout lover of all things dystopian, I was ready.

What I got, however, was not what I expected. This isn't to say that the film is lacking; it's just 100% focusing on things other than the reasons behind our country's fictional split.

It focuses on a team of war correspondents inching their way through to Washington D.C. in what may perhaps? be the closing days of said civil war. We never find out how long the civil war has been going on, nor who are the good guys.

Kirsten Dunst portrays a seasoned war photojournalist who is depressed, burnt out, and a war-battered shell of herself. She's joined by a young aspiring photographer who wants desperately in on this life, despite the absolutely traumatic nature of the job. Also along for the ride is the always excellent Stephen McKinley Henderson, most recently known for his role as House Atreides mentat Thufir Hawat.

They travel hundreds of miles through a ravaged American landscape—something that is in itself shocking as there hasn't been a full-scale war on mainland American soil in scores of years. At each stop they shadow armed combatants and bravely capture gut-wrenching photos of corpses, men writhing in pain, and other hideous atrocities.

The conceit of the film is summed up when Kirsten Dunst is asked a question about how photographers like her can document all this horror without taking sides or asking questions—she responds simply with "We record so other people ask."

By not giving the audience any insight into which is the right side of history (if there even is such a thing, in some conflicts) and following in the literal footsteps of these photographers, the film provides you with the full experience—you're not there to fight; you're there to record what is happening every step of the way.

If you judge the film by that metric, it succeeds. And maybe it would have by any other metric, had the film marketed itself as an Oscar-baity War Journalism Think Piece. But I was expecting a deep dive into cultural differences in America that led to a division and a war, which isn't terribly farfetched as I could rattle off three or four such catalysts right now that the U.S. is currently experiencing. Instead, we find out nothing of any substance. The scene with Jesse Plemons interrogating the journalists as to "What kind of American are you?" is as close to world-building as Alex Garland gets, though throughout the scene we have no idea which side Plemons pledges allegiance to.

I didn't realize until I got to the theatre that Civil War is an A24 production, and then things started to click. My experience with A24 movies is that they're nearly always about the horrors of trauma and what they do to humans. This film is no different, and you're brutally pummeled left and right through its relatively short runtime with ear-splitting assault weapon deaths, unspeakable violence, mass graves of U.S. citizens, and characters having literal (and multiple) on-screen panic attacks.

Among the reviews I've read, there seems to be a split. There are those who feel like I do, that it seemed like the previews made it out to be something else entirely, and that by refusing to take a stance about a political civil war, Garland didn't accomplish anything.

Then there are those who think it genius, and a much-needed depiction of the horrors of war and how no side is ever really right. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, like most things.

I'm glad I saw Civil War, and it definitely made me think—but I'll never watch it again. 

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The Math

Baseline Score: 7/10

Bonuses: Kirsten Dunst's performance is fantastic; there are moments of cinematic artistry scattered throughout; if you've ever wanted to learn about the cold, hard reality of war photojournalism, you're in for a treat.

Penalties: No real worldbuilding; extremely traumatic and violent; some viewers may feel as if they were bait-and-switched when they learn nearly nothing about the war.

POSTED BY: Haley Zapal, NoaF contributor and lawyer-turned-copywriter living in Atlanta, Georgia. A co-host of Hugo Award-winning podcast Hugo, Girl!, she posts on Instagram as @cestlahaley. She loves nautical fiction, growing corn and giving them pun names like Timothee Chalamaize, and thinking about fried chicken.

Microreview [film]: Annihilation by Alex Garland (director)

Questions You Don't Want Answers To

Something happened to Lena's husband. He returned home after a year long mission, but he can't recall how he got home or where he was. After he suffers from a medical ailment and is taken away in an ambulance, the couple are intercepted and taken to a mysterious facility. There Lena learns that her husband was on an expedition to explore Area X, a place where something unnatural is occurring. Lena, a biologist, can't save her husband, but another expedition to Area X is gathering and Lena joins them to find what could be killing him. 

Annihilation starts at the ending. Lena's debriefing a group of people in biohazard suits, alone, and trying to explain what happened to her expedition. From here, the bulk of the film follows her and four other women through Area X with some jumps back to examine her relationship with her husband, and forward to the debriefing. But knowing that Lena makes it to the end is no comfort. 

Annihilation is fascinating from beginning to end. It starts with a handful of mysteries like what happened to Lena's husband, what happened in Area X, who are the people on Lena's expedition and what happened to them. It deftly unravels these mysteries over the course of the film. What happens in Area X is absolutely worth learning on your own, so I won't explain it here, but it's at times beautiful, strange, and extremely unsettling. It's filled with moments where I had dawning realizations that something bad was going to happen and there was nothing I could do but watch. 

But it's not all horrors as it keeps Lena and her relationship with her husband running parallel to the exploration of Area X. While we see where that expedition goes, we also see where Lena's troubled relationship went before her husband left. It nicely pairs with the relationships between the five women on the expedition as they're pushed to their breaking points. 

After the film ended, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It doesn't answer every question, and it shouldn't, but it answers enough to satisfy. Annihilation is a dark, beautiful, twisted walk through the woods, with every twist given a human connection.

The Math

Baseline Assessment: 9/10

Bonuses: +1 from minute to minute, you'll never know what is coming next. If you do, you don't want it to happen.

Penalties: -1 at one point the title of the film is screamed and it's the only cheesy part of the entire film
.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 (very high quality/standout in its category)

BONUS Novel -> Film Mini-review: As soon as I got home from seeing Annihilation, I immediately bought the novel it was based on (reviewed by The G here). I read it over the course of two sittings because I found it surprisingly short compared to how rich the film is. The novel is very different from the film, and it's a rare instance where the film improves on the source material in significant ways. It's still weird but the film handles the unraveling of relationships and of Area X itself much better. It's so different that one could almost call the film less of a direct translation and more of something inspired by the novel. Perhaps the two other novels in the series make up for it, but I finished the novel less satisfied than I did watching the film.

***

POSTED BY: brian, sci-fi/fantasy/video game dork and contributor since 2014

Reference: Garland, Alex (director). Annihilation [Paramount Pictures, 2018]