I was so shocked when I saw the online discourse about the Civil War. I found it very obvious that it doesn't matter why Texas and California are aligned. I think you nailed it on why. It's not just about media literacy, it's the obsession with wars and good guys vs bad guys stories. I would add that the superhero movies contribute to the glorification of the military.
Thanks for writing this. I recently read War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. He really delves in to all of the ways war infects people and societies based largely on his own experience as a war journalist. If you’re going to pursue this further and more outside the film realm, I highly recommend.
i think often about the moment in Boyhood when Mason’s stepfather is talking about his experience in Iraq and someone asks him what kind of relationship his squadron had with locals, what the locals thought of the Americans being there.
Sophie, your critical analysis is incredibly adept. Watching the trailer of Warfare, going from a soldier pissing in a water bottle to the clink clink of a grenade dropping in front of another one, all of these nothing sounds, unscored, are indeed nauseating. I had a similar experience to your brother after watching Civil War. It left me undone and a little aimless. I kept waiting for a moral resolution, something to rescue me.
As a writer/director myself, this was a really good reminder for me to consider how to hide my worldview in plain sight, without being prescriptive or overly moral. Just to show the world as I see it, and nothing extra. Really invaluable critique for me to read as both artist and audience member. Thank you thank you.
Really great piece Sophie. My sense of Scott Galloway is pretty similar to yours, he's a something of a pretend radical. The "Mind Virus" stuff brought me back to Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent which was my bible at university for a time. And of course the Orwell War is Peace slogan is a comment as prescient now as it always was.
There's so much in here it feels disingenuous to go straight for the one caveat/slight disagreement that I have regarding your argument, particularly regarding Warfare. But I'm genuinely wonder about your thoughts on this: I found particularly the ending of Warfare kind of undercut it's intention of presenting war as terrible in the most objectively, horrific way. I don't mean the story ending, I mean the post film behind the scenes introduction of the soldiers who were obviously the basis for the characters and advisors on the "realism" of the film. I found this really did change the political aesthetics, reframing the soldiers squarely into the kind of sacrificial hero worship we see in a lot of more squarely militaristic films. If Garland had just cut to black after those escape tanks had gone, I think that would not allowed the view any escape from the "pure endurance test".
my first impulse is to give you an extremely bitter, negative assessment of your assessment of ww2 military intervention ("less heroic than tragically late").
i'll fire off my own response in a post, it's not the point of your essay.
as film criticism, this is a great read and insightful. i need to see Garland's stuff.
while reading this i thought a lot about sam peckinpah. the wild bunch is the meanest, most cynical film about america ever made (probably the most accurate, in my opinion) and the ending...
i wish i remember where i found this stuff, but peckinpah's hope or theory was that people would find an on-screen massacre cathartic. his horror was that people just found it "cool," or whatever word you want to use. the spectacle of violence on screen didn't help anyone process or purge themselves of their own violence, it just made it viscerally entertaining.
Thanks for your well-reasoned, expansive, and materialist assessment of Warfare. I found it refreshing after so many shallow and performative condemnations, particularly from the reactionary left (and tumblr). I commented somewhere on the latter that although this isn't an anti-war film in the liberal illusionist sense, it does provide viewers with all the material (and materiel) to create one in their heads. That's probably too much work and counterintuitive for most people, for all the reasons you enunciate so eloquently.
I read this article it's even inspired me to do a Twitter post very interesting. now what I'm not getting is either author is in favor of those characters praising the war or if the author is pretending not to be in favor of this characters praise in the world
I loved Warfare and Civil War, both, and I think you’re totally right about the objective presentation in Civil War – the act of looking being more important than “casting” one side or the other as different actors.
I wonder, if I was going to play Devil's advocate, whether there aren’t good wars – of course not – but there are necessary wars? I always assumed Truffaut was thinking of Vietnam when he said his bit, because it was the 1970s, and I think that was the first real moment where the public became aware of the hypocrisy and pointlessness of overseas intervention – but he also lived through the Nazi occupation of France as a child. It would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on Saving Private Ryan, for example. Does it glamourize war? I don't think so, at least not at the battlefield level, but it definitely paints the greater cause itself as heroic.
Deep down, I think the dark truth is also kind of a banal one: for many young men in the modern era, the idea of going to war is very exciting, until the moment your foot is blown off by a grenade. But when you’re 20, you don't think about that second part – you're immortal in your mind, and if you’re American, you have a trillion dollars backing you up. Something I liked about Jarhead and Generation Kill was that whole dynamic – the utter desperation these guys all had to go and kill people.
Really enjoyed your analysis of Warfare, Sophie. I’d add two thoughts to that:
1) the film relies on us taking Mendoza’s account in good faith. But Garland (see the Dazed interview on this) is aware of the limits of that framing. His choice to do Civil War, then Warfare feels like a deliberate move to test how far apolitical realism can go. That context helps, but it doesn’t erase the blind spots.
2) if the film’s aim is to purge military fetishism and show the true nature of combat, it’s telling that only the American soldiers are granted full cinematic subjectivity. The Iraqi interpreters and the civilian family are kept at the edges. That’s fine, but the logic breaks down slightly when after the soldiers leave, the story briefly shifts to the family coming out of their hiding spot. I think the politics of representation still matter, even in an anti-spectacle film like this one, and that needed to be said.
Movies help us talk about the uncomfortable, moving us to greater understanding -- or rather they could, but they require writing like yours, Sophie. Thank you. I wish we had more writing that pulled films back into discussions about LIFE. It feels to me like for 50 years most films and film writing pulled us out of reality, distancing ourselves. Films are the spark, but our words, spoken or read, is the gasoline -- it is when the thing we made truly becomes alive. I wish everyone's impulse after watching a film was to analyze why we felt the way we did when we watched. I find most current films hard to watch because they don't encourage that discussion after. They deliver a "proof" -- an end of the conversation. And we have all become primed for that shut down. We have to come prepared to pour that gasoline afterwards before the fire goes out.
Great piece as always, Sophie! Recently, I had a film student at NYU tell me about his thesis paper - that "all war movies are pro war movies." I gently asked if he had seen Come and See, Paths of Glory, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc. He had seen none of them, and mainly watched Marvel movies. It is understandable, then, how he reached this conclusion, as at least six Marvel movies have been made with financial support from the US military, and all of them have the glossy patina of war propaganda. I love what Alex Garland is doing.
I was so shocked when I saw the online discourse about the Civil War. I found it very obvious that it doesn't matter why Texas and California are aligned. I think you nailed it on why. It's not just about media literacy, it's the obsession with wars and good guys vs bad guys stories. I would add that the superhero movies contribute to the glorification of the military.
Thanks for writing this. I recently read War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges. He really delves in to all of the ways war infects people and societies based largely on his own experience as a war journalist. If you’re going to pursue this further and more outside the film realm, I highly recommend.
i think often about the moment in Boyhood when Mason’s stepfather is talking about his experience in Iraq and someone asks him what kind of relationship his squadron had with locals, what the locals thought of the Americans being there.
Oil. Plain and simple. /scene
What a great scene!
Sophie, your critical analysis is incredibly adept. Watching the trailer of Warfare, going from a soldier pissing in a water bottle to the clink clink of a grenade dropping in front of another one, all of these nothing sounds, unscored, are indeed nauseating. I had a similar experience to your brother after watching Civil War. It left me undone and a little aimless. I kept waiting for a moral resolution, something to rescue me.
As a writer/director myself, this was a really good reminder for me to consider how to hide my worldview in plain sight, without being prescriptive or overly moral. Just to show the world as I see it, and nothing extra. Really invaluable critique for me to read as both artist and audience member. Thank you thank you.
"'If the movie's presentation makes you want to go to war, there's something wrong with you,' Mendoza said in a Screen Rant interview. " <<< 💯
Really great piece Sophie. My sense of Scott Galloway is pretty similar to yours, he's a something of a pretend radical. The "Mind Virus" stuff brought me back to Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent which was my bible at university for a time. And of course the Orwell War is Peace slogan is a comment as prescient now as it always was.
There's so much in here it feels disingenuous to go straight for the one caveat/slight disagreement that I have regarding your argument, particularly regarding Warfare. But I'm genuinely wonder about your thoughts on this: I found particularly the ending of Warfare kind of undercut it's intention of presenting war as terrible in the most objectively, horrific way. I don't mean the story ending, I mean the post film behind the scenes introduction of the soldiers who were obviously the basis for the characters and advisors on the "realism" of the film. I found this really did change the political aesthetics, reframing the soldiers squarely into the kind of sacrificial hero worship we see in a lot of more squarely militaristic films. If Garland had just cut to black after those escape tanks had gone, I think that would not allowed the view any escape from the "pure endurance test".
Fantastic work as always.
'intellectual money laundering' - whew... brilliant.
Well done.
Thank you so much!
A really great bit of writing Sophie!
Thank you so much, Tomas ♥️
my first impulse is to give you an extremely bitter, negative assessment of your assessment of ww2 military intervention ("less heroic than tragically late").
i'll fire off my own response in a post, it's not the point of your essay.
as film criticism, this is a great read and insightful. i need to see Garland's stuff.
while reading this i thought a lot about sam peckinpah. the wild bunch is the meanest, most cynical film about america ever made (probably the most accurate, in my opinion) and the ending...
i wish i remember where i found this stuff, but peckinpah's hope or theory was that people would find an on-screen massacre cathartic. his horror was that people just found it "cool," or whatever word you want to use. the spectacle of violence on screen didn't help anyone process or purge themselves of their own violence, it just made it viscerally entertaining.
Yes give it a go! It's not for everyone but it's different and nuanced for sure.
Thanks for your well-reasoned, expansive, and materialist assessment of Warfare. I found it refreshing after so many shallow and performative condemnations, particularly from the reactionary left (and tumblr). I commented somewhere on the latter that although this isn't an anti-war film in the liberal illusionist sense, it does provide viewers with all the material (and materiel) to create one in their heads. That's probably too much work and counterintuitive for most people, for all the reasons you enunciate so eloquently.
Thanks so much for your thoughtful comment, Rock. Fully agreed!!
I read this article it's even inspired me to do a Twitter post very interesting. now what I'm not getting is either author is in favor of those characters praising the war or if the author is pretending not to be in favor of this characters praise in the world
I loved Warfare and Civil War, both, and I think you’re totally right about the objective presentation in Civil War – the act of looking being more important than “casting” one side or the other as different actors.
I wonder, if I was going to play Devil's advocate, whether there aren’t good wars – of course not – but there are necessary wars? I always assumed Truffaut was thinking of Vietnam when he said his bit, because it was the 1970s, and I think that was the first real moment where the public became aware of the hypocrisy and pointlessness of overseas intervention – but he also lived through the Nazi occupation of France as a child. It would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on Saving Private Ryan, for example. Does it glamourize war? I don't think so, at least not at the battlefield level, but it definitely paints the greater cause itself as heroic.
Deep down, I think the dark truth is also kind of a banal one: for many young men in the modern era, the idea of going to war is very exciting, until the moment your foot is blown off by a grenade. But when you’re 20, you don't think about that second part – you're immortal in your mind, and if you’re American, you have a trillion dollars backing you up. Something I liked about Jarhead and Generation Kill was that whole dynamic – the utter desperation these guys all had to go and kill people.
Really enjoyed your analysis of Warfare, Sophie. I’d add two thoughts to that:
1) the film relies on us taking Mendoza’s account in good faith. But Garland (see the Dazed interview on this) is aware of the limits of that framing. His choice to do Civil War, then Warfare feels like a deliberate move to test how far apolitical realism can go. That context helps, but it doesn’t erase the blind spots.
2) if the film’s aim is to purge military fetishism and show the true nature of combat, it’s telling that only the American soldiers are granted full cinematic subjectivity. The Iraqi interpreters and the civilian family are kept at the edges. That’s fine, but the logic breaks down slightly when after the soldiers leave, the story briefly shifts to the family coming out of their hiding spot. I think the politics of representation still matter, even in an anti-spectacle film like this one, and that needed to be said.
Movies help us talk about the uncomfortable, moving us to greater understanding -- or rather they could, but they require writing like yours, Sophie. Thank you. I wish we had more writing that pulled films back into discussions about LIFE. It feels to me like for 50 years most films and film writing pulled us out of reality, distancing ourselves. Films are the spark, but our words, spoken or read, is the gasoline -- it is when the thing we made truly becomes alive. I wish everyone's impulse after watching a film was to analyze why we felt the way we did when we watched. I find most current films hard to watch because they don't encourage that discussion after. They deliver a "proof" -- an end of the conversation. And we have all become primed for that shut down. We have to come prepared to pour that gasoline afterwards before the fire goes out.
Great piece as always, Sophie! Recently, I had a film student at NYU tell me about his thesis paper - that "all war movies are pro war movies." I gently asked if he had seen Come and See, Paths of Glory, The Best Years of Our Lives, etc. He had seen none of them, and mainly watched Marvel movies. It is understandable, then, how he reached this conclusion, as at least six Marvel movies have been made with financial support from the US military, and all of them have the glossy patina of war propaganda. I love what Alex Garland is doing.