From start to end, constant danger follows the group and never truly dies down as they travel across their war-stricken home turf, dodging both real and emotional bullets that hinder their path. Yet ironically they are obsessed with one thing and one thing only: "the perfect shot" – an end they’re willing to die for.
Through the perspective of the main character Lee (Kirsten Dunst), the audience witnesses how humans have the capacity to possess a complete lack of humanity. As she apathetically walks through and documents horrific scenes, her press badge becomes a shield, deflecting any emotions that could deter her from her job, as well as separating her from the rest of the country. From a suicide bomb in central New York to a largely abandoned petrol station in a rural no-man's-land, the group of journalists are polarised, set apart from the struggles around them, shadows of the soldiers that they follow through conflict.
Only by the end of the film does Dunst’s character properly come into contact with the events she photographs, when she is shot down moments before the photographers enter the room where the president hides. Her protegé photographer’s immediate reaction is to take a photo before hastily following soldiers through to the next room, to the more important shot Lee was never able to take.
The film offers an insightful glimpse into the work of war photographers, a practice that blurs the boundaries between impassive documenting and artistic liberty. Despite photography’s relative youth in comparison to other art forms, war photography is capable of a potency that arguably dwarfs that of other, older media.
This is perhaps due to the immediacy of a photograph – itself evidence of the reality of conflict. Unlike a painting, where the artist may draw a sketch at the scene before labouring over the work for hours in the following days or weeks, adjusting for the perfect dramatisation of a conflict, a photo is taken as quickly as the moment comes and goes, leaving little time for the artist to flesh it out to their own image. Mass production of photography from the 19th century was additionally key in bringing this to the public eye: a daily circulation of images in the news allows for a comprehensive view of the brutality of a conflict as viewers are brought face-to-face with nameless victims, courtesy of photographers similar to those depicted in Civil War.
Nguyễn Ngọc Loan summarily executes Viet Cong Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém in Saigon during the Tet Offensive in 1968.
'The Terror of War', a Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph taken at Trảng Bàng during the Vietnam War on June 8, 1972. Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the nine-year-old child depicted, would become known as "the girl in the picture".
This wildfire-like capability has resulted in strikingly recognisable images like those above, seemingly burned into our minds through their shock factor. They immediately throw the viewer into the scene and into an experience of discomfort not even close to anything anyone there, including the photographer, may have felt.
In the words of Robert Capa, perhaps the most famous war photographer: “You don’t have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda.”
However, perhaps from the photos we can infer some attitude on the part of the photographer. Simple giveaways such as camera angle and focus, or the photo being taken itself, give the viewer a glimpse of how the one behind the camera might have viewed the scene themselves. Especially in the decades following Capa’s photography, other artists have taken a more metaphorical approach. For example, Frauke Eigen, a German photographer, who, when recording the exhuming of a mass grave in Kosovo in 2000, decided instead to photograph the personal belongings and clothing recovered, a more indirect yet arguably more emotional and personal response to a similar problem.
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