Taking The Shot: Civil War and The Violent Power of Image

Capture. Shoot. Reload. Take the shot.

Is this the language of photography, or the language of war?

The general consensus I've gathered from headlines and reviews in the larger media outlets is that Alex Garland’s newest film Civil War is "a love letter to photojournalists" and a moving portrait of why journalism is so important. I guess it makes sense that journalists would write that! Don't get me wrong, I think good journalism is wildly important and these headlines were the primary reason that I decided to go ahead and see the film despite being completely put-off by the trailers—but as the credits rolled, I did not feel like Garland had written a love-letter. At best, he has written a cautionary tale; at worst, an indictment.

The first 2/3rds of Civil War were pretty invigorating to me. A road trip with all these little inexplicable vignettes and intense encounters with strange and disturbing people? That's a pretty good snapshot of what it's like to journey across America anytime. It probably helps that the whole thing is (very, very clearly) shot in Georgia all the way through, which gave me an even greater sense of homegrown connection to the America being displayed. In a very straightforward sense, the first half of Civil War is just a tense and well-paced thriller with a crystal clear dramatic question and compelling characters performed with resonance. It's those final 45 minutes, though, where the film begins to morph itself into something far more convicting and challenging to me. I felt personally confronted in a way that I haven't in ages.

In certain tribal contexts, there is a superstition that taking a photograph can steal a person's soul or weaken their lifeforce. As enlightened moderns living in a digital age, we all find this concept silly; after all, we capture, share, and see photos on a daily basis in a way that has completely desensitized us to their meaning or process. We forget that behind every billboard, every stock image, every mid-roll ad, every Instagram story, and every unsettling video of a violent act, there was a person with a camera pulling the trigger. And even though we are not all war photographers, we have access to more atrocious imagery at our fingertips every day than our ancestors could have dreamed of seeing in their lifetime. Perhaps the images we see do steal some of the soul of their subjects by trivializing, commercializing, and turning them into more "content" in our minds. Perhaps this process steals some of our soul, too.

Kirsten Dunst’s character Lee Smith believes that her photos are objective. Unbiased. Apolitical. They are serving a public good: to expose truth and injustice and allow the public to ask questions after the fact. But isn't "shoot first, ask questions later" the same logic as a trigger-happy soldier? Lee says that her photos of foreign wars and atrocities were meant to send a message home to her own country: "Don't do this." For Cailee Spaeny’s Jessie, though, her takeaway from Lee’s work was different: "I should be a war photographer." Regardless of the intention of Lee's images, their aesthetic value was too compelling, too inspiring; Jessie couldn't help but follow in her footsteps. The film, of course, becomes a redemption story for Lee and a cautionary tale for Jessie. Where Lee has always hung back and desensitized herself to violence to the point where she'd probably take photos of her own friends being murdered if she knew they'd turn out, in her final moments she abandons her craft and saves a life. Jessie, meanwhile, is transfigured into the next incarnation in the cycle—completely desensitized and capable of getting the greatest photo of all time without feeling a thing. She just shoots and reloads. And for what?

In the first half of the film, it's easy enough to believe that these journalists are truly apolitical, serving a nonpartisan public good; for better or worse, none of them express support for a particular side in this war, and they're all vocally interested in capturing unvarnished truth to allow the public to make up their own minds about the current events. Even faced with the most despicable and heartbreaking of actions, most of them can take the shot without hesitation. This illusion of clean hands and unbiased altruism begins to fall apart in the second half, though—and indeed, the point is driven home by the climactic final photograph.

In a culture driven by image, we underestimate the power and presence of images in our collective psyche, even our collective decision-making. Winning a war, in one way or another, is often about optics; you can't actually come out on top unless you've successfully convinced a certain percentage of the public to see you as the victor. This has always been true throughout history, but in a modern photographic world where image is everywhere, the instinct becomes even more powerful and important. Civil War starts with a sequence of the president rehearsing his monologue for television cameras, attempting to come across as authoritatively as he can. Even the most powerful man in the world is susceptible to the weight of image.

"Pics or it didn't happen" and "do it for the 'gram" are classic social media slogans, but they can also serve as the underlying motivation for political action. As Jessie's "one perfect shot" played over the credits, victorious militia soldiers grinning at the camera with the president's corpse between them, I couldn't help thinking of the photos taken of the insurrectionists on January 6th: A man with a white beard sitting with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk and sticking his tongue out at the viewer. That crazy QAnon shaman guy with the horns and the spear posing assertively in the Senate Chamber. The dude in a MAGA beanie grinning and waving at the camera as he walks out with the speaker podium in his arms. If there had been no cameras or smartphones or image-capturing devices present, would these people have behaved the same way they did? In many ways, it seems to me, they did it for the 'gram.

In the fictional siege on DC and the infiltration of the White House in Garland’s Civil War, the photojournalists and the Western Forces have the exact same goal: To be the one to shoot the president. To get the money shot. And the two parties act and move together as a unit; in many cases, we hear a gunshot and then see a photo taken—or hear a soldier shout “reload!” and see a photographer winding their film. The soldiers rigorously protect the journalists with them because they know that someone needs to capture their victory when it happens. The president is just a man; DC has already fallen. The image is the real victory. And the longer you stare at the photograph as it develops over the credits, the less "neutral" it appears.

Our "heroes," then, are arguably instrumental in whatever is occurring. For all the handwringing about detached objectivity, they are serving one side's ability to construct a narrative of success; if there were no photographers present to capture the assassination, it would likely be harder to convince the people of the WF's victory. We don't know much about the sides in this war—and indeed, the president is implicitly corrupt too—but it does seem like regardless of the outcome, only more violence lies in store for the future. And a photo of the guy in charge lying dead in the Oval Office sure ain’t gonna calm things down.

This does not, to me, indicate that Garland (or Civil War) is anti-photojournalism or against the concept of truth being documented. But it certainly paints a muddier picture of objectivity and altruistic intention working in tandem with powerful external forces and thorny internal motivations. The sheer fact that Jessie is taking all her photos on 35mm film feels like it proves that she’s not doing this out of an uncomplicated and purehearted desire to let the people see the truth as accessibly as possible, but to achieve the most iconic and prestigious photo on Time Magazine. I love shooting film, but come on sis, you're doing this for the aesthetic. These are characters who are ostensibly working as public servants, but are still instinctively operating as artists; that conflict was interesting to me because you can never fully rid yourself of the artistic instinct even in what’s supposed to be unbiased altruism. You still end up taking photos of your dead friend even when it serves no altruistic public good, because it’s good art.

Arguably, the "classical photojournalists" depicted here are representative of an old guard of establishment documentarian not particularly responsible for the real journalism occurring in our modern world. The image of officer Derek Chauvin's knee on George Floyd's neck in 2020 emerged not from a professional old-school magazine photographer, but from an ordinary person with a smartphone. The most harrowing and vital images coming out of Gaza are not (by and large) being captured by classical photojournalists, but by civilians—and many of them aren't even being shared by the establishment outlets supposedly intent on truth. These photos and videos are not aesthetically satisfying, and they do not participate in the mythmaking that begs to be on a front page. They are grizzly and horrific cries for help. Perhaps we need to learn to think well about our relationship to image in general; when to capture and when not to capture, when to look and when not to look, and when to consider what agenda a particular visual might serve.

It would seem that the biggest problem people on the internet have had with Garland's take in Civil War is that it’s not particularly interested in making any uncomplicated statements without caveats or complexities. The prevailing idea that the film "has nothing to say," though, feels wildly unobservant to me. Garland is saying a whole lot here, it's just that it's not about what people wanted it to be about. In the context of photojournalism, it’s a stew of ideas around the violent power of image to shape perception and action. In the context of war, which is what people thought the film would be primarily concerned with exploring, the message is much simpler: ”No one should hope for this, and no one will win.”

I do question how effectively that latter point is coming across, though. When the credits rolled on my initial viewing, the first thing I heard was the guy behind me saying to his friend, "that was fun." Is Garland's film illuminating the reality—through image—of what a grisly war in America would look like, and therefore sending home the message of "don't do this"? Or is it actually complicit in desensitization, showing us an "apolitical" picture with so much room for interpretation (and spectacle) that it incites our imaginations in negative ways? Is that hypocrisy the point? I'm still mulling it over. Either way, Garland's message has certainly not been universally received. Maybe that's what makes this good art. Maybe that's what makes it bad journalism.

Regardless, the dilemmas of the film were not impersonal for me. Even beyond the American political discourse, the portrait of detachment and artistic obsession within a journalistic context hit me particularly hard as a documentary filmmaker. I spent this entire spring shooting photos on film, and capturing followup interviews for my current feature. I’ve never been a war photographer, but there have been moments in my life where the conflict between “getting the shot” and caring well for other people felt palpable. And even when you’ve finished a project, the mindset still bleeds into your subconscious every day; I've experienced dark moments in my life and still felt the instinctive urge to pull out a camera, lest I miss out on potential material. I’m an artist. But sometimes that means I've gotta learn to put the camera down and save a life—even if it’s my own.