Director: Alex Garland
Genre: Drama/War
Year: 2024
Runtime: 109 minutes
In an unspecified but seemingly near-future America, civil war is in full swing. The sides of this conflict remain unclear: fascists versus anti-fascists, secessionists (Western Forces) against a president of the no-longer-United States who seeks almost-absolute power, and others who oppose them.
Determining who are the “good” and “bad” actors in this war is difficult – if not impossible – since, as history has shown, reason is often lost in the chaos of conflict. Against a backdrop of violence and devastation, two photojournalists (Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny) and two reporters (Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinney Henderson) embark on a perilous journey to Washington, D.C., a city rumored to be on the verge of collapse.
The plot was straightforward on the surface. There are no major developments in the narrative, and the story remains shrouded by the uncertainty – characters included. How long has this civil war been raged? How is it perceived beyond a nation’s borders? Who are these journalists? Most crucially, in such a hostile environment, where do they stand?
What is surprising, in fact, is that none of the protagonists – although emotionally affected by all the violence they witness – clearly voices their point of view on a war about which we know so little and which continues to devastate the country in an apocalyptic scenario in which everyone loses.
However, this type of detachment has a specific purpose. The entire story is filtered quite literally through the lens of their cameras. As war corresponds, their mission is to document events with the utmost objectivity. Personal beliefs and emotions are secondary. Instead, it is up to others – it is up to us, the audience – to ask difficult questions and pass judgment.
This is poignantly illustrated in a conversation between Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and young Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). When Jessie, overwhelmed by guilt and panic, wonders if she should have intervened in an execution instead of being a passive bystander – “without even taking a picture” – Lee replies with a harsh truth: «Once you start asking yourself those questions, you cannot stop. So, we don’t ask. We record, so other people ask. Want to be a journalist? That’s the job».
The contrast between Lee, a seasoned and revered war photographer, and Jessie, an aspiring journalist in her early twenties, highlights the generational gap. While Lee suggested that successful reportage requires emotional detachment, it is clear from the outset that she was consumed by trauma. On the other hand, Jessie belongs to a generation that has grown up witnessing war stories from a distance. A rupture in the history of her generation turned the anger and thirst for justice into something more disturbing: numbness. For Jessie, the camera does not merely document; it acts as a shield, absorbing the horrors she might otherwise internalize. But as the film reaches its climax – amid the catastrophic fall of Washington – her detachment turns into something even more disturbing: she seems almost mesmerized by destruction.
What Alex Garland seems to suggest – without offering clear answers – is that war, whether civil or global, has become something we have become desensitized to. Even in the face of devastation, even in the face of the most harrowing images, we, like the protagonists, have “suspended” our emotional engagement. We have allowed others to ask questions that we failed to pose when it mattered the most. By presenting a reality eerily close to our own, Garland urges us to step back – to recoil in horror at the sight of men smiling beside the bodies of their fallen enemies.
Ultimately, Garland leaves us with closing credits, a series of hauntingly beautiful photographs, and a multitude of unanswered questions. Among them, in a world grappling with real-life conflicts and political unrest – in a time when protests erupt in cultural institutions (much like the university uprising that sparked the fictional war) – why was this film excluded from the Oscars?
