Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 120 - Civil War

On this episode, Barry and I charge headlong to the front lines of Alex Garland's dystopian film Civil War. Topics discussed include missed opportunities, spitting out the lukewarm, and the albatross of poorly developed characters.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 120 - Civil War

Thanks for listening!

©2024

Civil War: A Review - A Lukewarm Film for our Scorching Hot Times

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT/SKIP IT. This is a mixed bag of a movie that should have, and could have, been great, but ultimately pulls its punches and ends up being just okay.

Civil War, written and directed by Alex Garland, is a new dystopian war film that follows the travails of photo-journalists as they chronicle the last stages of a modern-day American civil war.

The premise of Civil War is a provocative one – what if the cold civil war that rages in our culture and country turned hot? Unfortunately, Civil War doesn’t exactly live up to the promise of its provocative premise.

Civil War suffers because it isn’t popcorn enough to be a blockbuster, and not intellectually hefty enough to be an arthouse darling, and not quite enough of either to be award’s material.

That is not to say that the film is bad…it isn’t…but it also isn’t great. It is undeniably compelling and is cinematically very well-crafted, but it is definitely a middlebrow movie posturing like it’s high-brow.

The film follows four journalists, Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura), Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and aspiring photojournalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), as they head out of New York City in the hopes of getting to Washington, D.C. to interview the three-term President presiding over a chaotic civil war who hasn’t given an interview in fourteen months.

The country has broken into multiple factions and the government seems on the precipice of falling to the Western Forces – made up of California and Texas, all while other factions like the Florida Alliance and the New People’s Army are roaming around.

To get to D.C. the journalists must drive west to Pittsburgh, then head south to Charlottesville in the hopes of getting to D.C.. The film is essentially a road movie as the journalists navigate the treacherous journey to the failing nation’s capitol.

Much has been made about Civil War being apolitical, and I suppose that is true to a certain degree as the film never explicitly lays out the context, political or otherwise, of the civil war that now rages, but that is not the major problem with the film. No, the biggest issue with the film is that the journalists who are our protagonists are some of the least developed, and least captivating, characters you will ever stumble across.

Kirsten Dunst leads the charge as world-renowned photojournalist Lee Smith, but we know next to nothing about her and never get to know her on the journey. Yes, Smith undergoes a character arc of sorts, but it is predictable, and at its climax, trite and poorly executed. Dunst is good at giving a sort of dead-eyed, thousand-yard stare, but beyond that she fails to generate enough of anything to be able to carry to narrative load.

Wagner Moura is a decent actor but he is nearly invisible as Joel, the journalist set to ask the tough questions to the tyrannical president. Moura lacks the charisma to make his poorly written character come to life, and that he is front and center at the most critical point of the film diminishes its impact.

Cailee Spaeny plays Jessie Cullen, the young woman who wants to be like her photo-journalistic idol, Lee Smith. Spaeny does her best with what she’s given, but like her co-stars she isn’t given nearly enough, and she is not quite dynamic enough to generate interest.

Stephen McKinley Henderson plays the veteran, aging journalist Sammy, who has seen a lot and wants to see how this civil war concludes. Henderson has an innate humanity about him which jumps off the screen, and he does the best of the cast despite being limited by a poorly developed character.

The best performance in the film, and the best scene in the film, is by Jesse Plemons who plays a nameless militiaman the journalists have the unfortunate luck to come across. This scene is electrifying and Plemons absolutely crushes his role with an underplayed yet undeniable aplomb.

Another issue I had with Civil War was that the way it was constructed eliminated much of the drama. For example, early on in the story the journalists are on the road and then somehow are embedded with a rebel force, I suppose the Western Forces, but we never see the first contact between them. How did they hook up with the Western Forces? Were they in danger when they first met? How did either side know who was friendly and who was dangerous, especially in a world where the most banal of things and people are menacing? That would’ve been a great scene filled with drama – just like the scene at a gas station earlier in the movie, but it is never shown so we’ll never know. This type of thing happens throughout the film and it diminishes the drama.

Director Alex Garland cinematographer Rob Hardy shoot the film well and it is gorgeous to look at. The soundtrack is very good too and so is the editing by Jake Roberts. I would say that this is easily Garland’s second-best film, but it is miles behind from his directorial debut Ex Machina (2014), which was a mini-masterpiece. I found Garland’s two other features, Annihilation (2018) and Men (2022), to be underwhelming and poorly executed.

As for the politics of this film…well…when a movie titles itself “Civil War” and sets itself in modern-day America, the expectation of audiences is that current politics will be front and center. Civil War though never clearly sets the context for the war it dramatizes and so we don’t know the why or how or even the who of it all. This is not a crime in and of itself, but it does limit the film in terms of its appeal to more blockbuster-oriented audiences.

That said, the reality is that there is an undercurrent of present-day politics in the film, but for the most part the movie is sly enough to let the viewer project their own political pre-suppositions onto the festivities, which is a very arthouse sort of way to go about things. Liberals will see the bad guys as Republicans and conservatives will see the bad guys as Democrats…for the most part. For example, there is a reference in the film to an “Antifa massacre” but it never states whether it was Antifa being massacred or doing the massacring, which is pretty clever.

The president in the film (played by Nick Offerman) certainly seems Trumpian enough though to satiate the left and piss off the right, but it’s never too explicit and that’s probably the point.

On the other hand, the racial politics are pretty clear as the bad guys out in Middle America only like “real Americans” and kill unwhite people, and a black woman plays a pivotal role in the climax of the film and that is definitely not a coincidence.

Another thing to remember when judging the film’s politics, or lack thereof, is that this movie had a budget of $50 million – which isn’t a whole lot, yet it had to use a pretty decent amount of military equipment…helicopters, tanks, fighter jets, etc…and those things aren’t free…unless you make a deal with the Pentagon and turn over final edit and final say over the theme of your movie. It seems to me that Garland neutered the politics of his movie in order to get it made and play nice with the Department of Defense. I don’t know that for a fact but I would bet it’s true.

The political “subtlety” of the film is certainly a choice, but it clashes with the action-oriented/Hollywood climax that is meant to appeal to blockbuster audiences, and so the film, with clowns to the left of it, and jokers to the right, is stuck in the middle.

When I walked out of Civil War I admit I was a bit perplexed by the mixed bag I had just watched. I wanted the movie to be better, and thought it should have been better. Alex Garland had, a decade ago, made one of the very best, and most currently relevant films of this century when he took on the topic of Artificial Intelligence in the movie Ex Machina, and in the context of our current debate over AI, Ex Machina was eerily prescient.

But Civil War seemed less relevant than it should have been considering the political moment we find ourselves in here in the U.S. and across the globe. That’s not to say Civil War won’t seem prescient ten years from now, but right now it feels too lukewarm to be meaningful, which is a terrible shame.

To quote Jesus from the Book of Revelations 3:15-16 (what other book from the bible should you be quoting nowadays but Revelation?), “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth”.

I enjoyed the taste of Civil War as a compelling, if intellectually and often dramatically vacuous, piece of cinema. But ultimately, I’ll spit it out of my mouth because it is too lukewarm for my liking.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2024

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 63 - The Power of the Dog

On this episode, Barry and I put on our ten gallon hats, chaps and cowboy boots to discuss director Jane Campion's Oscar front-running anti-Western, The Power of the Dog. Topics discussed include toxic masculinity, Benedict Cumberbatch's lack of masculinity, and the state of the CODA v The Power of the Dog Oscar race.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 63 - The Power of the Dog

Thanks for listening!

©2022

The Power of the Dog: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!! THIS IS NOT A SPOILER FREE REVIEW - YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. A self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull piece of empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is as vapid as it is predictable and trite.

There has been a considerable amount of Oscar buzz and critical acclaim swirling around the new Netflix film The Power of the Dog, and understandably so, as it stars one-time Oscar nominee Benedict Cumberbatch and is written and directed by Jane Campion, who won a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award back in 1993 for The Piano.

The movie, based on Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel of the same name, tells the tale of the Burbank brothers, Phil (Cumberbatch) and George (Jesse Plemons), two cattle ranchers in Montana in 1925. The brothers are very different people, with Phil the grizzled, hard-edged cowboy and George the more reserved, rotund and less respected suit-wearer.

When George marries a local widow, Rose (Kirsten Dunst), and becomes step-father to her very “special” son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), the story takes a turn.

As a devotee of the arthouse, The Power of the Dog, which on its surface appears to be an intricate, gritty, western drama in the vein of Paul Thomas Anderson’s brilliant There Will Be Blood, would seem to be right up my alley.

After having watched the film all I can really say is looks can be deceiving.

Critics are fawning all over the self-indulgent, dramatically inert and suffocatingly dull The Power of the Dog, giving it a 95% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, but I think the only reason for that is because the film is allegedly a mediation on “toxic masculinity” and it’s directed by a woman.  

For instance, Brian Truitt of USA Today gushed over the movie declaring it “a picturesque, enthralling exploration of male ego and toxic masculinity, crafted by an extremely talented woman…”

Peter Travers of ABC ejaculated, “Can Jane Campion’s western about toxic masculinity and repressed sexuality win Netflix its first best Picture Oscar? Let’s just say that no list of the year’s best movies will be complete without this cinematic powder keg.”

The problem with these critics, and with director Jane Campion, is that apparently, they not only have no idea what great cinema is anymore, but they also have absolutely no idea what genuine masculinity is either, nevermind its toxic variety.

The biggest example of that is the praise Benedict Cumberbatch is receiving for his portrayal of Phil, the supposedly toxically masculine cowboy who bullies and berates those around him with abandon.

I like Benedict Cumberbatch as an actor, but let’s be honest, he isn’t exactly the picture of robust masculinity. In fact, he is so miscast as Phil that watching him strut and prance around in his cowboy regalia and put on a faux tough guy pose, takes on a most comical of airs. The main reason for that is Cumberbatch’s inherent delicateness and utter lack of manliness.

Phil needs to be a menacing, ominous physical presence, but Cumberbatch is a dainty posh Englishman and with his mannered American accent he comes across, as they say in Texas, as ‘all hat and no cattle’.

Phil is supposed to be an emasculating bully – so much so that, just like Jane Campion slaughters subtlety, he actually castrates young bulls by hand. But Phil comes across less like a bully and more like a High School mean girl brat who isn’t going to beat anyone up but sure as hell will say something catty and hurtful.

One of the main targets of Phil’s “toxic masculinity” is Rose’s teenage son Peter. Peter is a painfully thin, very effeminate young man who dresses like a dandy and likes to make flowers out of paper. Just so audiences are made completely aware of how effeminate the character is, and also so that nuance can be completely dispatched and unintentional comedy heightened to the maximum, when Peter is demeaned by Phil and a bunch of ranch hands at a dinner, he responds by going out behind the house and frantically blowing off steam by using a hula hoop. No, I’m not making that up.

The film’s insight regarding masculinity and its toxicity is as deep as a pool of cow’s piss on a flat rock. For example, not to ruin the surprise for you, but… in a plot twist you could see coming from miles away like a steam train crossing the plains on a cloudless morning…the reason Phil is a mean-spirited son of a bitch is because he’s a closet case homosexual.

Let’s be clear, you don’t exactly need the most advanced form of gaydar to see Phil’s hidden, super-secret sexual yearnings. Phil’s sexual proclivities are pretty obvious when he’s waxing nostalgic about his dead friend Bronco Henry as he delicately strokes Henry’s old saddle.

One of the few things I did like about The Power of the Dog was its score by Radiohead guitarist Johnny Greenwood. But even that has its downside, as Greenwood’s score for The Power of the Dog is very reminiscent of his score for There Will Be Blood…and conjuring that masterpiece does no favors to this flaccid film.  

Come to think of it, I suppose The Power of the Dog is sort of like a cross between There Will Be Blood and Brokeback Mountain, but just without the powerful performances, insightful scripts or deft direction.

Ultimately, The Power of the Dog is not man’s best friend because it’s a movie about masculinity made by people who know nothing about the subject. It’s empty Oscar-bait and arthouse fool’s gold that is nothing more than a symptom of the plague of mediocrity that is currently ravaging the art of cinema.

So don’t waste your time on The Power of the Dog as this mangy old mutt needs to be taken out behind the barn and put out of its misery.  

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021