I also got a very "bothsideism" vibe from the contextless war and the inexplicable TX/CA alliance.
Between this and Men, I'm now wondering if something happened to Alex Garland during the pandemic and he only wants to fuck with people now.
In an annoying King Missile kind of way.
He wanted to fuck with people before, too, but both Annihilation and Ex Machine had actual good stories in them that the films served well.

brephophagist wrote: Thu Oct 03, 2024 7:59 pm I also got a very "bothsideism" vibe from the contextless war and the inexplicable TX/CA alliance.
Between this and Men, I'm now wondering if something happened to Alex Garland during the pandemic and he only wants to fuck with people now.
In an annoying King Missile kind of way.
He wanted to fuck with people before, too, but both Annihilation and Ex Machine had actual good stories in them that the films served well.

He’s said he’s going to stick with writing from now on. Maybe he realised directing isn’t working?

I think the ambiguity is an attempt to allow the personal stories to play out over the big picture. There are clear hints, so again, I think this is an attempt allow the viewer more agency. But this fails. Of course the biggest question people will have is “what is the context, how did this happen?” Garland is going for Show Don’t Tell.

It could all have been fixed with some text at the beginning of the film a la Star Wars.

Fuck me, so we're stuck with his writing now? It just gets worse.

Ace K wrote: Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:08 am I think trying to present a civil war without any consideration for the causes of that civil war is pretty similar to talking about the Civil War without acknowledging the causes of the Civil war.

I think the causes of the civil war are pretty fucking obvious (like, hey, that's where we're headed bub) and the movie's not interested in rehashing that. The movie's just there to let us all know how horrible it's gonna be when it happens in case we want to try a little harder to avoid it.

BrendanK wrote: Fri Oct 04, 2024 6:40 pm

Ace K wrote: Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:08 am I think trying to present a civil war without any consideration for the causes of that civil war is pretty similar to talking about the Civil War without acknowledging the causes of the Civil war.

I think the causes of the civil war are pretty fucking obvious (like, hey, that's where we're headed bub) and the movie's not interested in rehashing that. The movie's just there to let us all know how horrible it's gonna be when it happens in case we want to try a little harder to avoid it.

I might have considered that a convincing argument at one point when I was like 20 but I don't anymore, I think maybe it's desperately naive. There are a lot of people on one side who hope it will be bad, who desperately want it to be bad. In that context, being unwilling to say is either pure cowardice or centrist delusion, the sort of degraded thinking that lets supposedly liberal administrations decry fascism in one breath and then call for more cops in the next.

Like, imagine a movie about the Civil War. You could strip it of all context, wow war is hell here are these people abstractly killing each other, sometimes one guy seems heroic or the other does but it's all nonsense because they're just doing war. Or you could do the same thing and include the context, in which case the story is war is hell, why are you creating hell so that the rich can get richer off the enslavement of other human beings?

Presenting a false equivalence between fascism and the victims of fascism is a pro-fascist stance.

Ace K wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2024 4:18 am Like, imagine a movie about the Civil War. You could strip it of all context, wow war is hell here are these people abstractly killing each other, sometimes one guy seems heroic or the other does but it's all nonsense because they're just doing war.

I had this same thought. Let's assume the goal was to keep viewers from thinking too much about the political details behind the war, to make the characters more important / foregrounded. The smarter choice is to tell us nothing about the war and just giving both sides a single word name like "Alliance" and "Nationals" - don't even need to say "civil war" because of the title. It would make the experienced journalists even more valuable to us, the viewers with no context. We'd learn along with the kid journalist.

I'll say this for the choice Garland made to keep e.g. Jesse Plemons' character's allegiance in the war vague: it provoked a strong reaction.

brephophagist wrote: Sun Oct 06, 2024 1:51 pm I'll say this for the choice Garland made to keep e.g. Jesse Plemons' character's allegiance in the war vague: it provoked a strong reaction.

Wasn’t he clearly carrying out a hasty “final solution” on the behest of the third term president, whose regime was set to fall? The “edgy” part was when the friendly boogaloo types gleefully execute their POWs earlier in the film.

You can make it as vague as you like, this is a long standing tradition in these kind of things (McCarthy’s The Road, Bergman’s Shame, Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice), but this film is a irredeemable turd.

I really enjoy ancient history when it’s about the ordinary person. How many shits did a typical Roman citizen care about who was the emperor? The emperor was the emperor, get on with life. (Recent Mary Beard book about that.) Farmer family just wants to harvest, doesn’t care about changing to one solar based god in Egypt. Same with the Popes. (Folks in power, different story.) The American revolution? Most were ambivalent.

Exceptions, sure, but a lot of ambivalence overall.

That’s what I took from the not-taking-a-side-ism here. Most people just want comfort and stability. Lame? Sure. I prefer strong principles, myself. But what would a civil war be like for a lot of folks? Just keep me safe and leave me alone?

The end, please. KD would’ve dived to get Young Dingbat the hell out the way. So balls to that.

But I liked it and LOVED the soundtrack, shazam.

Ace K wrote: Thu Oct 03, 2024 1:08 am cowardice or centrist delusion

Agreed on all points, mostly the above.

Aside from feeling that a central (dull) protagonist that was a photo-jo seemed anachronistic and yearning for days gone by, very little in the film seemed more than borrowed. Living dangerously. Without the context for the underlying sides and some history, then it's hard to care -- everyone looks like they got what they deserved, including Missouri as they presumably get to say 'Show me when you're done.'

I had hoped to see something like a mix between Come and See and Gallipoli. Fuck off, they said, you get tinted sun glasses and glibbery.