Alex Garland’s A24 film Civil War has sparked a large, circular online debate over the way Garland frames his story, with minimal background details about what led to the titular civil war or what the country’s various factions stand for. The argument over how, whether, and to what extent the film represents the actual state of 2024 America has overshadowed much of the conversation that Garland actually wanted to offer viewers after watching his film. And in particular, it ignores some of the film’s finer nuances – such as the pivotal moment that truly defines the film Civil War‘s story.
Civil War focuses on two photographers: war-weary veteran photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) and naive but talented newbie Jessie (Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny). When Lee and her longtime writing partner Joel (Wagner Moura) embark on a cross-country trip to Washington, D.C., Jessie, along with aging journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), coaxes her into joining them. Lee and Joel hope to interview the President (Nick Offerman) before separatist forces take over the capital. Jessie and Sammy just want to make sure they’re in the right place to witness and report on the new, crucial phase of history unfolding in America.
Over the course of the film, which Garland wrote and directed, it becomes increasingly clear that Lee is burnt out, depressed and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. When her friends rush into battle to capture the moment, she flinches or ducks. With a blank stare from afar, she observes a raging forest fire up close. And she keeps trying to dissuade Jessie from taking part in the trip or even doing war journalism. Lee’s war-hardened instincts allow her to protect Jessie from danger and she takes command in sensitive situations, guiding Jessie through the ways a journalist can handle threats in a war zone. But Lee also lectures and denigrates Jessie, as if she wishes she could retroactively dissuade her own younger self from her chosen career path.
Their relationship clearly reflects the veteran-protégé relationship between two women 28 days later, one of Garland’s first film projects: In his script for this film, a hard-nosed, experienced woman (Naomie Harris) takes a younger woman (Megan Burns) under her wing, with a fair amount of desperation at the unwanted responsibility, and perhaps simply A touch of relief that she can externalize her own fear by caring for someone else. But Civil War
All of this leads to this defining moment for Civil Wara single, silent shot in the back half of their journey.
[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Civil War, including end spoilers.]
Lee and Jessie never reveal to each other why they chose a career in journalism, or why war correspondence in particular. Their personal motives, much like the larger motives behind the war, must be determined from small moments and scattered dialogue throughout the film. Instead, they have an open ear for cameras. Lee uses a digital camera; Jessie shoots on film and develops this film herself using a portable chemistry kit. It’s a remarkably old-fashioned way for a young woman to ply her trade, save for the way she repurposes an iPhone (otherwise useless in a country without cell signals) as a slide viewer. But Jessie insists on taking pictures the way her father did.
Why is it so important to record a short technical convers ation in your free time about the tools of the trade? On the one hand, this allows Lee and Jessie to bond as equals and not as “wise elders and upstarts,” which becomes crucial later. On the other hand, it gives the audience one of the few glimpses into what drives Jessie’s passion. She throws herself into intense combat situations like a zealot, unaware of the danger, but never fully expresses why photography is so important to her. Taking a little time to talk about the feel of the film gives her a softer, more human side than the rest of the film, which sometimes treats her like an audience avatar – the newcomer to troubling situations where she isn’t That’s just how she behaves – and sometimes treats her as bait to lure Lee into danger.
But more importantly, the exchange about cameras underscores Lee’s devotion to digital technology, a medium that allows her to capture and store many more images than Jessie, but which also gives her the ability to literally erase history if she chooses holds correctly. And when she does, she provides the most meaningful character beat in the entire film.
This moment comes after a harrowing encounter with a handful of heavily armed locals, led by an unnamed man in camouflage and red sunglasses, played by Jesse Plemons. When these locals kill some of Lee and Joel’s press colleagues, Sammy races up in Joel’s truck to intervene and get their group to safety. However, during this rescue he is shot and slowly bleeds to death as they make their way to safety. Lee grimly takes a photo of his body, slumped in the driver’s seat, a layer of blood spread across the side of the truck.
And then she silently looks at the image on her camera screen and decides to delete it.
Like so much in Civil War, this moment never gets much of an explanatory speech in which Lee reveals what she’s thinking. It is quite likely that different viewers will see completely different motifs at any given moment. (Which is fine; Garland says he prefers to let people get what they want from his films.) Lee offers her friend one last dignity by not sharing an image of his corpse with her news agency Reuters and turning it into a photo transformed? a product for sale? Or is she just showing once again that she is tired of war, tired of death, tired of witnessing atrocities on behalf of other people? Is she deleting the picture for her own sake because she never wants to see Sammy’s body again? And if so, is it because she is guilty because of the brutal things she said to him before the journey began, or because she survived and he did not? Or is it something completely different? The details are up to your interpretation.
What is clear and unequivocal about this moment, however, is that Lee is actually choosing to edit the national record of the war by deleting this one image and ensuring that it is something the future will never see. Sammy will be buried, the truck will be cleaned, and life will go on for most people. Lee’s job is to capture such moments so that they are not forgotten, so that other people in other places can understand and experience war and its costs. But in that moment, whether out of guilt, respect or exhaustion, she decides to erase Sammy’s death from the files. The moment shows how much power journalists have to shape a story, and how their responsibility can be divided between what they want for their audience and what they want for their subjects. It’s also a powerful approach to character building, with Lee exerting control over the narrative for her own personal reasons.
This scene is all the more significant because it shapes the final moments of the film. During the final raid on the White House, Jessie again recklessly charges into the line of fire, and Lee is fatally shot while carrying her to safety. Lee dies so that Jessie can live, and it’s the obvious capstone to a story about a generation passing the torch to the next – a cynic leaving the stage to make way for an idealist who will probably become a cynic at some point will if she lives long enough.
Jessie responds to this moment by taking her own photograph of Lee’s body, in turn creating a memorial to her as part of the recording. We see the image captured and see the image itself, meaning that the image has survived the sometimes risky process of film development and printing. It’s a fascinating parallel: two different journalists making decisions about how to cover the death of a colleague who saved their life and how to share that death with the world. The decisions of both women are consistent with their characters and their reactions to the war – one turns away from it, the other preserves it for posterity at all costs.
Civil War doesn’t tell the audience what to think about these decisions. That’s Garland’s style these days, for better or worse: he throws images on the screen and leaves it to individual viewers to discuss and decide what he’s getting at. Often the things he omits or omits are more important to the story he is telling than the things he elaborates on.
But while the nature and causes of war in Civil War It’s definitely worth talking about, but just as important are the small, personal stories in which people make important decisions. Lee’s moment with the image of Sammy is a tiny slice of the story that is easily overlooked in the cacophony of the larger conflict. But it is also the moment that marks the end of the film and that reveals the most about Garland’s intentions. Civil War is not just a film about what decisions led the country to war or what decisions different states made, who they want to ally with and what goals they want to pursue. It’s about individual decisions, both in and out of a crisis, and how those decisions affect the future.
Garland doesn’t disparage Lee for erasing her memory of a life-saving friend. He also doesn’t judge Jessie for seizing the moment and documenting her loss. But he shows how different two people can be, even in the same job, in the same conflict, at the same moment in history – and all in just a few wordless shots.