I had hoped and expected to like this film far more than I did. It's certainly visually and aurally stunning and, if you're going to see it, it's absolutely worth seeing in a theater. The problem is that I'm not sure what film Garland was intending to make and it appears he may not have been either.
While it most obviously intends to be a cautionary tale for our extraordinarily polarized time, it plays more like a film about the dispassion of journalists in violent situations a la Medium Cool. To the first point, while it very effectively shows the horrors and brutality of war, by choosing to not describe the genesis of the conflict (though it's not hard to fill in the blanks given current politics and rhetoric) he ended up making a spectacular film about an abstract war with little context. In the end the message seems to have been simply war is bad and let me show you why in stunning detail. Had he spent some time exploring the reasons behind the conflict and maybe even talking a side it would have been a much better film.
In addition to Medium Cool, Civil War brings to mind The Year of Living Dangerously and Under Fire. All had similar themes and, while none had the technical brilliance of Civil War, all three were better movies.
While it most obviously intends to be a cautionary tale for our extraordinarily polarized time, it plays more like a film about the dispassion of journalists in violent situations a la Medium Cool. To the first point, while it very effectively shows the horrors and brutality of war, by choosing to not describe the genesis of the conflict (though it's not hard to fill in the blanks given current politics and rhetoric) he ended up making a spectacular film about an abstract war with little context. In the end the message seems to have been simply war is bad and let me show you why in stunning detail. Had he spent some time exploring the reasons behind the conflict and maybe even talking a side it would have been a much better film.
In addition to Medium Cool, Civil War brings to mind The Year of Living Dangerously and Under Fire. All had similar themes and, while none had the technical brilliance of Civil War, all three were better movies.