Remember how when Elephant (2003, Gus Van Sant) won the Palme d’Or film journalists had said it was inspired by the 1989 Alan Clarke BBC tv movie Elephant; then later others would say Van Sant hadn’t even seen the Clarke film? The Alan Clarke film is a powerful commentary without words that depicts 13 separate filmed murders to convey the senseless nature of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
But the Van Sant film is powerful too, in its own way. Maybe does it have something to do with the way we get to know the victims first? The Columbine coded students had no reason to be in the crossfire. They weren’t fighting a war. They were just navigating the turmoil and carefree terrain of being a teenager. What both of these films seem to have in common is their basis on contemporary tragedies related to gun violence in their respective regions. Or like you know, stuff that really happened.
Civil War (2024, Alex Garland) isn’t so much a depiction of senseless violence as it is a pointless exploitation of violent aggression. Like Clarke’s Elephant there’s an ambiguous quality to how the factions’ purposes are never revealed, nor is there any apparent meaning behind any of it in the end. It might be chilling if it wasn’t so ugly horrible; and well, unlike Alan Clarke's film, all made up. Am I missing something or what was the point of all this?
It just seems like it’s one drawn out sequence: Americans are killing each other for no reason. My other problem with this movie is I don’t really think there’s anything glamorous or cool in the way the film romanticizes war photographers. It hero worships them to the point of being redundant. Like how many times do we need to see someone skulking around with their Leica in danger zones? It’s like how I hate how stupid photos of directors framing something with their hands or pointing at something with their mouth agape is supposed to be cool.
I don’t know I just have a distaste for what I deem people wanting to film or create works of depravity for their own sake. Yeah it’s a fine line I guess. It’s subjective. Free speech, art, blah blah blah. When it comes to horrific combat journalism I need nothing more than that Time cover of the aftermath of the Corto Maltese revolution by Vicki Vale in Batman (1989, Tim Burton) for my imagination to do the rest; there are some things it’s not necessary to show to convey the idea.
Atlanta, GA
DCP
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