I should really stop identifying certain things as being inappropriate to include on this site. It’s starting to seem that, once declared, I inevitably turn that very vice into a habit. In this case, I am referring specifically to my forswearing the temptation to “review” a movie based entirely on the previews. And yet, here I am to do just that.
The movie in question is the recently-released Civil War. When the trailer came out, it filled me with both anticipation and trepidation. The former because not only did the trailer look pretty slick but the film offered a timely answer to questions that are swirling around in the popular consciousness. The latter because this was a topic that was so, so easy to get entirely wrong.
I know people who rushed out to see the film on opening weekend. YouTube is also awash with semi-amateur reviewers who did the same. There is a consistent message – at least from one subset1 of the viewing audience – saying the movie is an utter failure.
My first post-release takeaway is that the movie that came out differing quite a bit from what we all expected2. Most importantly, the most obvious pitfalls – the ways this movie could have gone wrong – have been avoided. We expected a film about the current political divide in America and how it might all go wrong. The question, then, was which side of that divide would the movie take? Apparently the answer is “none of the above.” Not only doesn’t Civil War pick the “good guys” from one of the three political/military factions in the film, it also doesn’t delve into what makes any of these factions tick. As has been pointed out, this could be considered really smart. Alienating one-half of your potential audience is a bad commercial strategy.
But if the film isn’t going to be about America and our current cultural conflicts, then what is it going to say to us? From the reviews we can learn that Civil War is really about a quartet of journalists who travel the highways and byways in search of their a story. It seems a strange choice, this, to focus on the observer rather than the observed. The angle suddenly made a lot more sense to me, though, when one reviewer referred to Apocalypse Now. I think he was talking, mostly, about the film as a journey but, for me, it connected a lot of dots.
Seen this way, we understand Civil War not a war movie but, rather, a war-correspondent movie. One might even draw a connection between the filmmaker and the photojournalists he portrays. Perhaps he is imagining how he, professionally, would experience such a war, rather than portray how some “hero” or even members of his audience might do the same. If only to prove that someone will always take things farther than you would, I glanced3 at a somewhat lengthy (and favorable) analysis focusing on the journalists. The reviewer seemed very excited about how the characters’ differing choices for lenses reflected not only their personalities but some deeper meaning for the film. To be honest, if the movie really is about camera lens technology, that’s a big stroke against it for me.
While the focus on the journalists is undeniable (even if not taken to such an absurd length), the Apocalypse Now comparison is a little more basic. Sure, Apocalypse Now DID feature a (photo?) journalist in a key role, but nobody would suggest it was all, somehow, about Dennis Hopper’s reporter. It was, though, about a journey. Might we find some additional meaning behind Civil War by thinking about it in terms of its cinematic predecessor?
Sure enough, an awful lot of the Civil War reviews refer to Apocalypse Now, even if only superficially. This leaves me to wonder whether Civil War wasn’t truly intended to be, at least at some level, an Apocalypse Now remake. That, in turn, leads me to a further thought. If it HAD been a more faithful remake, might it have been a better movie?
Apocalypse Now might well be expected to show up on any list of the best films about the Vietnam War. But it is a strange entry, isn’t it? As a traditional war movie, it is distinctly lacking an important feature – an enemy to be vanquished. Because in many ways, there are no sides to the portrayed conflict. That is to say, we rarely see the “enemy” in Coppola’s classic. Of course we do see the Viet Cong, and witness them fighting back, when Lt. Colonel Kilgore napalms a village. But this is a battle that has little to do with the “war” itself. Later, when encountering an unseen and undefinable enemy at Do Lung Bridge, the fighting is, apparently, to no purpose. As the movie approaches its conclusion we witness Willard’s “team” being killed, not by “the enemy” but by Kurtz’s Montagnards – ostensibly combatants on the same side. Perhaps the film is telling us, we are our own greatest enemy.
While caught up in YouTube’s undertow, I stumbled across another video looking for “the theme” of Apocalypse Now. It assembled elements in a way I never fully considered. The point of the film, this analysis goes, is to contrast America’s sometimes casual commitment with the “total war” mentality of the communists. The theme itself is obvious; both Kurtz and Willard criticize the “softness” of America’s approach. The video, however, points to the pervasiveness of the theme. Kilgore’s surfing, Playboy‘s concert, and other minor elements could all be seen as serving to highlight the difference between being causally engaged and being all-in. Kurtz knew we couldn’t win if we weren’t all in and for that opinion he was declared a heretic and, proverbially-speaking, burned at the stake.
All of which gets us quite far afield from the themes in Civil War. The key elements – the journey through a deteriorating situation – may well align with the Apocalypse Now take on Heart of Darkness. So what if Civil War had taken this all the way to the end? Might it have become a movie we would all have been eager to see?
Bear with me here a moment. Imagine a surprise twist at the end. Kirsten Dunst’s photojournalist turns out to be an assassin hired by the powers-that-be to knock off Nick Offerman’s Trump-lite and end the war.
Ah what might have been.
The fact is, when Civil War comes to me on streaming I’m going to watch it no matter what. If for no other reason, I’d kind of like to see the “OK, what kind of American are you?” scene in proper context. As much as I’ve tried to pigeonhole the critics into opposing political camps, I’ve seen praise for this scene (and, to be fair, the movie in general) coming from all sides. I still hold out hope that the film has something to say about the collapse of society, despite the evidence suggesting that it does not. I can afford to blow an hour and forty-nine minutes on that.
![](https://ettubluto.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/pexels-photo-610293.jpeg)
- In my casual review of reviewers, I’ve also seen some very strong praise for the film out there. I’ve noticed much of it being from the big, big city newspapers. Is this big media scratching each others’ backs or does this movie have an appeal in big, blue cities that eludes the rest of us? ↩︎
- Another reason why writing this on the basis of the trailer is such a fool’s game. In this case, the trailers created expectations for a very different film that the one that was about to be released. ↩︎
- So it is bad enough that I am conveying detailed opinions about a movie I never watched. How much worse is it when I base those opinions on reviews I also never watched. Maybe my WordPress account deserves a 15-day suspension. ↩︎