Capturing Humanity’s Failure – Civil War Movie Review
Despite coming into the Civil War movie with preconceived notions due to commentary I watched by Tim Pool, I found myself pleasantly surprised by how it all played out on screen.
Civil War Movie Review
So funnily enough, when I was younger, I wanted to be a journalist.
Even while I was in film school majoring in Cinema Studies, I almost minored in documentary film production but ended up choosing producing, instead. Despite this, I worked at various documentary production houses, helped organize (and even submit to) documentary film festivals, and even applied to Vice Media in Brooklyn (before later being denied – a blessing in disguise, I guess given how that company turned out) back in its heyday.
A brief anecdotal history of my life aside, what I am trying to explain is that in some vein, I wanted documentary film and journalism to be in my life. I still feel that way, but it seems now my path has morphed into something more – an “antiquarian”, perhaps – as my love of old books and the history stored within has completely changed how I view film, works of literature, and other forms of media in our popular zeitgeist.
Cameras as Weapons of War
Echoing Tim Pool’s comments (and stories) about the journalists being (to paraphrase) ‘complete psychopaths’ obsessed with getting the shot – I can totally see that being the underlying theme of the Civil War film.
There was a clear visual narrative of photo journalists (or more specifically, war journalists) utilizing their cameras in a similar fashion to the rebels and military factions using their guns.
Each “shot” of a gun was often followed by a bullet piercing a body.
Cameras were used as military scopes to detect the hidden location of opposing snipers. And on the odd occasion – cameras were even used as bargaining chips toward flattery of murderous egos in efforts to buy gas for the press car.
Reconciling War Photography and its Morality
But what got me the most, was how the characters could not reconcile what was happening in their current reality, or even why they were continuing to take the photographs as the film went on. The biggest shift in character motives had to be Lee Smith, the female photographer that young fledgling war photographer Jessie Cullen idolizes.
While at first I actually did sympathize a lot with her character ( a young woman trying to break into a career, wide-eyed and eager to learn) that feeling quickly changed to annoyance as the story went on.
Jessie Cullen Got Two People Killed
There was a common theme of finding the “sweet spot”, or knowing just when to take the shot to capture the essence of a scene. As somebody who also studied photography extensively (and also enjoyed taking photos of the photographers at work like Jessie often did to Lee) I was pleasantly surprised at how Jessie’s shots improved, while her concern for her own safety and well-being diminished.
If we are honest, Jessie only got to tag along because Joel wanted to sleep with her.
This is confirmed when Joel states he is “so hard” watching the gunfire in the distance with Lee and Sammy, before making a beeline straight toward Jessie who is alone in the press truck. Joel offers her marijuana, and wants to “keep her company” to which she politely declines.
Later on in the trip, Sammy also confirms that Joel was drunk and hitting on Jessie before she asked to tag along.
Joel seems to deal with the stress of the war zone by (presumably) having promiscuous sex, smoking weed, and drinking hard liquor (or vodka) before passing out and then waking up to do it all over again the next day,
Lee Smith seemed to be pensive, as was her mentor, Sammy.
Interestingly enough, the changing of seats in the press car foreshadowed both Lee Smith and Sammy’s later deaths in their efforts to protect Jessie.
Initially, Lee was hesitant to bring her respected mentor Sammy along on the ride to D.C. because he was “too old”. While Sammy agrees, Lee eventually relents before declaring she is “going to bed” for the night. In reality, we see Lee in the bathtub, haunted by the past events she has witnessed and the atrocities she has captured in her photographs.
While never really explaining her backstory outside of her Wikipedia page to Jessie, Lee does make a point in telling Jessie that she wanted her photos to be a message – a warning against the atrocities of war. Because of this, and the town the crew stumble upon that is living as though the war were not happening – seem to deeply affect Lee’s psyche.
So much so, that for the remainder of the film there is a juxtaposition of Lee withdrawing from photographing horrific scenes, and hanging behind to just document the aftermath. This is compared to Jessie metamorphosizing from a timid journalist to one that is overly-eager and even getting in the soldiers’ way and putting herself directly in front of gunfire just for the shot.
Foreshadowing Lee and Sammy’s Death
But, you’re probably wondering how Lee and Sammy’s deaths were foreshadowed by their seats in the press truck, right?
Well, Lee makes the comment that the backseat is for “old people” and “the unexperienced”, to paraphrase at the start of their journey.
After the shopping trip in the “somewhat normal” town with shooters on the rooftops, though, Lee decides to sit in Sammy’s spot, while Sammy sits “shotgun” to Joel in the truck. This can be interpreted as a reference to how Sammy would eventually die, as he was shot trying to save the others after Jessie foolishly gets into the car with the other journalist who is eventually assassinated.
(To be fair, it is equally Joel’s fault for telling his friends about their supposedly secretive mission to interview the president in D.C.)
By my own logic though, the group most likely would have left Joel’s “friends” to their fate and not had intervened had Jessie (the “youth” the older ones were trying to protect) not gotten into the other car, and then been captured by copying the recklessness of the older male journalist.
Why I say that Jessie got Sammy killed is because Jessie and Sammy switch seats after Sammy is shot, and he bleeds out in the car while watching a forest fire – the implication being that it should have been Jessie, instead.
Now as for Lee, well – Lee sat in the back seat in Sammy’s original spot. Lee is also the one who cleaned up Sammy’s blood from the seat in the car, bringing to mind what Lee told Jessie about not wanting to “be responsible” for another photo journalists’ death.
Well, we all know what happens next – Lee Smith throws Jessie down on the ground and away from the gunfire in the White House just as Jessie captures Lee’s literal death on film.
Instead of giving any semblance of mourning Lee, Joel and Jessie – previously excited by the chaos in D.C. – go to find the president.
Joel finishes the mission of interviewing the president (and hearing his pathetic last words – as Sammy predicted) and Jessie captured the photograph of the exact moment of the president’s death, while the end credits of Civil War show the ‘trophy photo’ of the Western Forces with the president’s body taken in her black and white film grade.
Is Civil War Worth Watching?
Although it overwhelmingly leaves you with a hollow feeling at the end, I think Civil War encapsulates the experience of a war journalist – no matter the era. From the clear slips of consciousness to the internal reconciliation of the immorality of what they have done to “capture the shot” against the ‘morality’ of virtue signaling to “warn the public” of the atrocities of war (despite some journalist in the press celebrating the murders with opposing forces) the journalists were still portrayed as very human – which is a very tough thing to capture on screen.
Also, this film may indeed have been the one referenced at the end of Barrack Obama’s Leave the World Behind in addition to potentially being predictive programming for the (potentially) impending 2nd American Civil War most citizens feel brewing on the horizon.
But, tell me your thoughts.
Do you think Civil War is actually connected to Leave the World Behind, as presently theorized? Should Jessie have died without Sammy and Lee’s protection, as inferred by the film? And, was the president in the movie an (obvious?) stand-in for Donald Trump?
Let me know your thoughts and leave them in the comment section below! And until next time ~
“This world is a shadow of the real one”.
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