EPISODE 259: Civil War
Can we experience our experiences without taking photographs of them? This is one of the many questions asked in Jett and Gareth’s look at the brilliant, picaresque horror film from Alex Garland: Civil War.
Along the way they relate the movie to such work as Andor, Cold Mountain, Salvador and even After Earth, and decide we all need an avalanche of kindness in the world. French philosopher René Girard is in the mix as well, along with thoughts on the career of Anthony Perkins. Also we spoil the end of The Godfather Part III. #GentleJesse
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You know, we made photographers like Robert Capa, great, rich.
More than half their money, they... They captured the nobility of humans and suffering.It was a great shot in Spain. One flying through the air. Yeah, but it was more than the bodies, Richie.
Okay, folks, normally, as long-time listeners of the old show know, we always start with a little laughter, a little ha-ha, a little jokey, a little comedy, a little ribbon.
Laughter. Nature's healing medicine.
The best medicine. The best medicine, as they say.
Well, not necessarily. It's like the old thing about alcoholism versus cancer. You go to a desert island, and you're an alcoholic.
You're gonna get clean, but if you go and you have cancer, it's not helping. Therefore, is alcoholism a disease? Okay, wait, no, no.
Well, let's, we gotta take that over.
Let's start again.
You know, normally, we start the show with laughter, and Gareth and I had a decision. I had a nightmare about doing the show, starting with laughter.
We're not gonna do it, we said, because this is a film that is not necessarily bring up the jokey jokey, ah, it's a serious piece of work. We're talking about Civil War. This is The Film Talk.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. This conversation never ends and this is Alex Garland's film set in not too distant future alternative US. America where there has been a horrendous Civil War.
Does anybody ever call it the US.
America? What kind of American are you?
When the word America is used to refer to just the US it can be, let's just say, a little presumptuous. But yes, anyone, any listener who has seen Civil War knows on the basis of what I just said, I'm definitely not the right kind of American.
Well, and that scene is so good. It's in the trailers for a reason because when you see the trailers, even then it's like, oh, oh no. We're talking about Civil War.
You've just given us a little taste. Let's listen in.
What's going on? Someone in that house, they're stuck, we're stuck.
Who do you think they are? No idea.
Repress.
Cool. Now I understand why it's written on the side of your vehicle.
And that was Civil War, which is being thought of as an anti-war film, and I'm sure that's intention. I felt it was more like a horror movie.
It's easily paralleled with Apocalypse Now at one level, in that it's about a small group of people going up a pathway to meet, I don't know, the mythical character, the kind of demonic mythical character, in this case, the president.
It doesn't have the kind of surrealism and mystery that Apocalypse Now has, but it does have a lot of the horror. This film is a bit of an ordeal to watch.
I'm a fan of Alex Garland, particularly his film Annihilation, which is kind of a bleakly mystical film, Jett, I don't think you've seen Annihilation, have you?
I've seen it many times.
It's great. No, you haven't.
I have. What? You texted me.
I asked you yesterday, have you seen Annihilation?
You said, give me a couple of days. That wasn't a specific answer. Did you cut down a cherry tree?
What kind of American are you?
There's a different kinds of Alex Garland fans. Can we call them fans? You got your beach.
They're those that have watched his films and those that claim to have watched his films.
You got Annihilation and then you've got, of course, you know, what my personal favorite is going to be, Man.
Judge Dredd.
Judge Dredd.
Man. Have you seen Man?
No, no, but I have seen Annihilation, which is a bleakly mystical film. I was really taken with it. It made me not just think, but feel something frankly about the gravity of life.
This film did, too, and it is horrifying. It does start near the end of the war itself. Unlike a lot of films of serious intent these days, it has a relatively short running time.
It comes in at well under two hours, which is pretty rare.
Shocking.
At least these days. And there's this irony in it. As I was on my way in to watch it, I think I was in a restaurant that had TVs and there was an ad coming up.
I couldn't hear the sound, but it was clearly being marketed as an as an action thriller like White House Down, which is the film it is most superficially like in terms of its story beats or Independence Day because there's a climax at the White
House that involves something awful happening, although of course this film has serious intent. It's the main criticism that's coming its way is that it does not go into the reasons for why there is a civil war.
And that's that's dear listener, if you could, if you could only see the face of my beautiful, beautiful co-host, the beautiful, beautiful Jett Loe, he seems like he wants to say something.
His hands are in the air, his teeth are bared, he's his eyes are wide.
I'm going to pause and invite you, Jett, please put yourself out of your misery and tell us, tell us what's what's your concern about this film not explaining the reasons for the civil war.
Here's the only explanation I have for these critics, which I've seen as well, read and viewed on the interwebs.
Be kind, be kind.
There's only one explanation.
Yes.
In a weird synchronistic event, all of these critics felt an urge possibly to go to the bathroom or get a soda all at the exact same time for about 90 seconds in the scene where it's explicitly spelled out the impetus for the civil war.
It's very, very clear.
The third term of the president, the abolition of the FBI.
And bombing American citizens. It's very, very clear. So it's not a left versus right.
It's this Nick Offerman character is a dictator. He's assumed dictatorial powers and states this is set up America into splintering. And the largest forces are the Western forces of California and Texas.
And in little throwaway lines of dialogue, we get a sense that possibly there's other factions that are around as well. But it's very clear.
So I just had to get that out there because I mean, that's the only explanation, the only explanation I think there may there may be another and that is, frankly, a lot of people are desperate to be able to explain what's going on in our society
right now. You said something a long, long time ago in an early episode of TFT that one of the reasons that drives what we call conspiracy theories.
You were talking particularly about 9 11 was that the reality of the horror of 9 11 is more horrifying when you realize it was just what was at 19 men hijacking some planes who were able to create so much terror and havoc that that's more horrifying
Someone's in charge.
Yeah, it's and that's a that's an absolutely human, totally naturally occurring feeling people want to be reassured.
And so I think the concern that a lot of people have for the way political polarization manifests in our society.
And I want to say honestly with, you know, with great empathy as a participant in this as well as someone who's experienced to there is a kind of collective trauma happening in in our society that's that's to do with the rising tide of people being
able to be vulnerable with their feelings to talk openly about what's going on inside them. That's one thing at the same time colliding with our parents generation, what worked for them not working for us anymore in terms of stable economies, you
know, job for life, even having a retirement plan that can or being able to afford a house. Never mind the really dramatic, horrifying spectacles of the last 25 years and the way they get beamed into these devices we carry around in our pocket.
This is not rocket science. There is a collective trauma happening at the moment.
And so of course, when a movie comes out called Civil War, that appears superficially to be taking place in a despairing version of our potential future, people want more of an explanation. They want more of an answer.
They want more to be able to understand. They also want who they would consider the bad guys to be clearly named as such so that we can map that on to the society we're in right now. It did not bother me at all that this movie didn't do that.
There are other people doing that. There are people who study peace and conflict resolution. There are essayists.
There are philosophers. There are movements like the Braver Angels movement that brings people from what we call red and blue perspectives together. A lot of that is happening because, in the end, for me, this film is not actually about Civil War.
This film is about Instagram.
But I still think maybe they all went to the bathroom at the same time. But we're going to talk. I really want to get into this movie because it's seared itself into my brain.
Tell me why it's about Instagram, which is actually a really interesting thing to say because one of the interesting things about this film is because the infrastructure is so damaged and torn apart, clearly people aren't getting signals.
This film actually seems to take place in a world in which there isn't social media.
Sure, sure.
So it's about how everything needs to be photographed and not experienced, and that so many people, it appears that many people's sense of their own self-worth or a large portion of their own self-worth is to do with taking photographs of themselves
and publishing those photographs. And it does seem that the experience of life is in competition, very serious competition. One might even call it a civil war between the experience of life and the photographing and the publishing of that experience.
This film, the people in this film don't expect, I mean, I don't want to spoil things, but like the worst positive, you know, if one of the worst things a person can do is to not intervene when harm is being done to somebody else.
This film makes some very stark points about that. I don't want to neglect the fact that it is beautifully photographed, extremely well crafted. It doesn't miss a beat.
I do think it's two thirds baked as a script, not half baked, not fully baked, but two thirds baked, but not because it doesn't explore the reasons for the civil war you've already outlined. It does name those reasons.
Is that because it's at a higher altitude and therefore you got to let it go along? I think that's a really interesting theory.
Now when I first hear that, though, it comes into direct conflict with the fact that the whole film is ensconced and seems to be, I would say, literally about the experiences of war photography.
And the heroes of war photography that are mentioned, or Lee Miller in particular, I want to talk about here, existed in a pre-Instagram world.
And I'm speaking here, I want you to know that maybe I'm seeing the film differently because I'm a working photojournalist.
I've never been a war photographer, I want to talk about war photography in a second, but I am a working photojournalist, there's very few of us left, folks.
So in that sense, the film is an exploration of the, I mean, this goes to your point, it's an exploration of what are the requirements, but more importantly, the responsibilities of being somebody that is documenting events.
Because it's stated very explicitly, the character of Lee played by Kirsten Dunst, who's, I'm loving Kirsten Dunst more every year.
Her face as, her face, you know, Hollywood is so grotesque in its beauty standards, I can't even call it a standard, in its beauty conceptions of beauty, that do, to have an actress, I don't know, is she like, maybe she's 28, but she looks like her,
she looks like her age, I don't know her age, but it's so great to see that the film really is an examination of the responsibilities of reporting and examines in, and these are throwaway bits and pieces, but there is nothing that is not intentional
in this film. That's when you know you're in a good film, right? Like David Cronenberg's History of Violence, there's not a wasted shot, everything here is very, very deliberate, very allegorical, and it posits a world of different types of
journalism and has long discussions, and you could say the film gets a bit clunky because the action stops to go into discussions about the merits of recording and the merits of photojournalism, but it can contrast, you know, Kristen Dunn's
character, for instance, with embedded reporters, and, you know, the real reporters kind of, you know, pooh-pooh the embedded reporters. There's even a scene right near the end of the film, as they're storming the White House, where the embedded
reporters have to do another take because their take got messed up because of a tank, and so that means they're not recording reality. They're trying to get something that's nice and clean. Does that make sense? I mean, I like your Instagram theory.
Don't get me wrong.
Well, thank you.
I'm here. I'm here to praise you.
You know, I wonder what you think of the friend of mine, Brian McLaren, texted me after seeing the film and he made it what I think is a really valuable point.
And that is that by embedding the viewer with journalists, it puts the viewers in a place of observation without engagement or the or moral passion. Not that it's that you have to identify with one side or the other.
In fact, the film I want to see is the one in which the side we are asked to identify with is the side that chooses not to use violence or that we're confronted with the part of ourselves that might be willing to use violence unnecessarily and
without any kind of defensive justification. For that, people often ask me, you know, what side am I on regarding the conflict in and about the North of Ireland and Northern Ireland?
And frankly, because of people who've mentored me, because of people that I have been inspired by, what I say is I'm on the side of people who choose not to use aggressive force to achieve political ends.
And it doesn't matter whether you're pro-British, pro-Irish, two wrongs don't make a right and to whom much is given, much will be required.
And so like the people who have the most power in the situation should be the ones who prioritize non-violence, violence reduction, and trying to strategize for a way, for a path away from the kind of point of no return.
So I don't think this film would be better if it just made us identify with one group or the other.
It might have been better as a mini-series in which you kind of go through one person on the, what do they call it, the Western forces, and one person from the other side, one person, you know, someone who's kind of a low-level aide within the White
House and trace those journeys. It's still pretty rare to see stories that talk about what possesses people to use aggressive force against others.
So at this point that being, and we're embedded with the journalists, so we don't actually get to identify with or feel a whole lot of empathy for the suffering that's being done by the combatants.
Even the framework that's used in this film where the opportunity exists for someone to give their life for somebody else, it's all within the tribe of journalists. There's not a whole lot of interaction between the journalists and anybody else.
Well, that's the story, though, and the thing is that there's a difference between the marketing of the film and what this film is, and I always avoid trailers, I did see that one with Jesse Plemons, who we're going to talk about.
But this is a story about journalism. I don't know Alex Garland's background, the writer and director of this film. Maybe he was a journalist, but this film, as I said earlier, does stop and start to have discussions about journalism.
So that's what it's centered around. I do want to say, to your point about Belfast, because that's where I met you. And you know, I lived there for what, I think about four years continuously.
And it wasn't until I was there about three years that people started opening up about their feelings about the Protestants or the Catholics.
And you know, I had this, you know, that shocking, that realization that everybody there was, you know, deeply, deeply hurt that I certainly worked with when I was over there.
And one of the horrifying things, then I came back to the United States and I had an experience like, sort of like Kirsten Dunst did, is that when I worked for, when I was working at ABC, I worked for some journalists that were very conservative.
And they had this sort of a belief in American acceptance, kind of like it can't happen here kind of a thing. And they had no problem joking or playing around with threats of violence.
And they seem to have no realization about the disastrous path that allowing any sort of political violence to be normalized can take. Because then to take, put that genie back on the bottle will take decades.
And so for me, that was, you know, incredibly horrifying. We've built all of these structures, all of our civilization, to reduce the potential for political violence. Because when it does erupt, it is absolutely horrifying.
And we see that, I mean, we do, I take your point about the where the embedded journalists were not saying different, you know, we're not going to different areas or people that are against the conflict.
But the picaresque nature of this film, in which every little adventure is a different allegory for an aspect of political violence, I think actually does work very well, right?
So we see, for instance, Jesse Plemons and his gang, they don't have tags on them that say what forces they are of any kind. They're sort of like militias. They're not necessarily political figures.
They're just racist nationalist figures. There's an astonishing scene in which Jesse Plemons goes around, kind of around Robin and asks folks where they're from, to determine if they're the right kind of American.
So the scene may not seem realistic in some ways, but then it's absolutely realistic if we think of this film as the series of allegories. Does that make sense?
Sure. I mean, also the fact that you can't, well, I'm not going to tell you what you can't do.
Sometimes you do it off the show. I have my own life, sir.
But the film talk always comes first.
What kind of American are you?
The serious intent of Alex Garland and the rest of the people to make this film, to prevent any of the violence appearing to be cathartic or exciting.
Except, I would say it makes it even more explicit. So not just always make it horrifying. We have a character who gets off on it.
He says, what a rush in the first third of the film.
But by the end of the second third, He's breaking down and screaming.
He's screaming. And I thought we don't hear his screams. I thought we were going to cut to him hearing the scream as like the end of Godfather III, colon, the death of Michael Corleone, colon, re-edit.
Which is a great scene, by the way, spoilers. The director Marie Antoinette dies at the end of that picture. I said spoilers.
It came out 30 years ago.
34 years ago.
What is the cutoff?
One of the most underrated films in history. There's no cathartic violence in this film. And that sequence of this character screaming in horror, what he's experienced, I've very rarely seen that.
It's a little bit like The Zone of Interest. Great film, unpleasant to sit through.
It's so tense. You and I both know film grammar, even though we know what's coming.
I wouldn't say that I know film grammar.
He's a lovely guy. He's a great guy. Phil, Phil Grammar.
Let me tell you about Phil.
How's this Uncle Kelsey doing?
Phil Grammar is a lovely guy. He can be a bit kind of a cut up sometimes. He's a bit cutty.
Oh, that's a little Phil Grammar joke for you. You know, it's not cathartic violence. But what do we see at the very end of the film?
As the credits are rolling, we see an analog film developing of joyous, happy soldiers around the body. Over a dead body.
Yes, over a dead body.
Well, I mean, people got to watch the movie before listening.
And what does it look like? Well, it looks like Abu Ghraib and it looks like those photographs of guys who go on these cruel safaris where they kill an endangered species and stand over their body.
And we've seen both photographs like that in the post-911 era. And we've seen them in the last few years with a certain kind of alpha toxic masculinity, triumphalism, trophy stuff.
And I guess, I wonder, we've often talked about films that we thought had something really meaningful to say, but weren't going to be watched by people who might most benefit from seeing the film.
It's worth saying, I think Civil War is one of those films, it's been a while since there's been one of those, but it really is speaking into the cultural moment we're living in, and plenty of people are talking about it.
And I'm not hearing a lot of people saying that it excited them or it generated any sense of inspiration toward mistreating anybody else. It just felt like a warning.
As I say, I don't really think that its primary point is about the structures of social relationships in the United States.
I think one of its primary points is about the difference between experiencing life and taking photographs of your experience of life.
Well, are you saying that it's a call to action? Because we had the main character, Kristen Dunst, and then she doesn't photograph. She could have photographed her young protege being killed and instead saves her and sacrifices herself.
So for her, that's the journey that she's made. If we go with your analysis, which makes perfect sense, it's saying that action is required rather than just being...
Yeah, we got to shake out of this...
. rather than just being passive. But, you know, I want to talk just one second.
You just remind me of something. I was thinking about Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.
And one of the things that people say this all the time, and deservedly so because it's a brilliant concept, what she did was all the things you see in The Handmaid's Tale, and say, the book, I can't speak to the show, or the director of the tin
drums version in the early days. Your first version of it. All the things that happened in The Handmaid's Tale.
Volker Schlondorf.
Is that his real name?
Cousin to Phil Grammer, I imagine.
Well, you know, they've got stories. Little Oscar, always having a problem getting served. That's a tin drum joke for you there, folks.
But all the things that happened in The Handmaid's Tale in terms of the treatment of women are all based on real things that have happened throughout the years. And it's the same thing in Civil Wars.
I feel that Alex Garland looked at the breakup of societies and then decided, I'm just going to portray this, but in the United States. So we have the scene at the gas station, for instance. Sorry, the scene at the car wash.
And these people, two men are being tortured. And the man that's torturing them, or just looking at them as they're slowly dying, says, you know, I went to high school with that guy.
And this immediately flashed on something like, you know, the Hutus versus the Tutsis, you know, the neighbor versus neighbor, that incredible strange feeling of despair and Twilight Zone and ease you get when you realize that in these civil
conflicts, people that have lived seemingly normal lives next to each other for years can turn on each other in an instant. So that's kind of, you know, one example of the allegorical nature of this film.
Yeah. And again, of course, I want a film about people who've lived alongside each other who choose to make peace and that, again, it's obvious why that kind of film doesn't get made, doesn't mean, doesn't make it any less necessary.
In fact, more necessary because we don't tell stories that model how we can get out of this morass.
Well, what's the line in the film with that Star Wars guy?
There's plenty of...
It's plenty of those.
Oscar Isaac, yes. Oscar Isaac. I don't see much money in this.
I don't see much money.
Or, you know, Gil Scott Heron did a great song called Work for Peace and he said, the only problem with peace is you can't make any money out of it. What we need to do is find a way to monetize peace.
Well, you know, we actually already have, it's called having a less violent society because prosperity, you know, various measures of prosperity, and certainly we could have many episodes exploring, examining, investigating the accepted definitions
of prosperity, but safer societies do thrive. And so I think there's actually, it's kind of blunt logic and kind of superficial reasoning to say there isn't any money in peace. There's plenty of research. There's plenty of research.
You don't have to dismissing Gil Scott Heron.
I'm not dismissing Gil Scott Heron.
He was writing at a different time and who knows, maybe it was different then, but I don't think anybody would dispute that the peace process in the North of Ireland has been good for the economy. In the North of Ireland.
So I think there's blunt reasoning and it's a superficial argument, lest we forget.
I mean, I think this is never great what you said about the film being a call to action because there is one character who chooses not to pursue the money and save someone rather than take photographs of it.
That character also later in the film chooses to delete a photograph from her camera because she respects the person whose suffering was photographed. And that person is, what did I call them the other week?
Anchor actors, not character actors, actors who anchor a movie.
Well, we got to talk about this guy. We got to talk about this guy.
So here's the thing, I'll name him in a second. I don't think I noticed Stephen McKinley Henderson until Fences.
Okay, listen. I'm going to drop another Gil Scott Heron reference.
Hold on. Not just every film would be better with Stephen McKinley Henderson, but pretty much most things you could do in the course of a day would be better if Stephen McKinley Henderson were there. He would have wisdom for you.
He would help you chuckle at things that need to be chuckled at. It turns out he's very good with driving a truck extremely fast when that needs to be happened. A delightful presence, magnificent in this film.
Talk to us about Stephen McKinley Henderson.
Oddly enough, you bring up another line from Gil Scott Heron's Work for Peace. Work for Peace was released in the wake of the first Gulf War. And there's a line about General Norman Schwarzkopf.
Stormin Norman. He says something like, you know, last week no one ever heard of him. Now he's famous.
Because if you lived during that time in the United States, I had never heard of Norman Schwarzkopf. But within a period of about maybe a week and a half, all of a sudden he was one of the most well-known people.
And it was if the media was acting as if like, well, of course, as you know, Schwarzkopf back as if he had always been there. And Stephen, this McKinley guy, I never heard of the guy. And now I can't every movie I see that he's in it.
It doesn't matter. The movie could be 10,000 years in the future in outer space. It could be some sort of pirate adventure in the Caribbean.
You know, it doesn't.
What could that film be called? What could a pirate adventure in the Caribbean be called? Have you got a suggested title?
Yes, Caribbean Pirates.
Caribbean Pirates. And then Caribbean Pirates 2, The Return of Stephen McKinley. I mean, the man's in everything.
And at some point I'm wondering, is it possible? It's another theory, much like going to the bathroom theory for critics. Is it possible there's twins involved?
Because he's in every gosh darn movie.
How could he have the time?
Well, I'll tell you somebody who I'm glad has the time, and that's Jesse Plemons. Now, you know, typecasting is a pejorative term. Like, if you get typecast, you know, don't forget Anthony Perkins was a star before Psycho.
He was a heartthrob star.
A looker, as they say.
He was a handsome heartthrob. Girls were swooning over skinny Trial, Orson Welles starring star, Anthony. The Trial, good film.
Anthony Perkins. And then Psycho happened in his career. Took a turn.
Got typecast. But you know what? When it comes to Mr.
Jesse Plemons, I don't care. When I want quiet, terrifying menace and the possibility of death coming at you from any corner, it's got to be this guy, don't you think?
I've seen Jesse play gentle. Jesse's gentle sometimes.
Gentle Jesse.
Gentle Jesse. Gentle Jesse, the Caribbean Pirate.
He could do... Yeah, he never steals anything. Instead, he just renders aid.
The pirate ship just renders aid to ships in... Captain Gentle Jesse.
Bags of flour. Bags of flour.
Yeah. With instructions on how to make bread. And if you can't read, they teach you how to read.
They give you literacy lessons. Gentle Jesse, Caribbean Pirate.
I love the fact that Jesse Plemons is wearing rose-tinted glasses in the scene, as if it's some sort of he's in a fictional America, right, in which there's only real Americans, which is one of the many clever touches in this movie.
So, Jett, tell me this.
Yes.
Gentle Jett. Yes. What are some of the other photojournalist movies that you'd like the listener to know about if they don't already?
Well, there's a few, but the one that is the most hard-hitting is difficult to recommend because it is a film that has such a disturbing scene in it that that scene, I think about probably about once a month.
And I thought about that since I saw this film in the mid-80s and it's a horrifying, horrifying scene. And that that film is Salvador. Starring the guy from a casino.
Yeah, James Woods in a very James Woods performance. This is the kind of movie, very Oliver Stone film, the kind of film where James Woods is on a payphone in a sleazy slumlord house.
And when he hangs up the phone, the payphone, he pulls out the quarter on a string. It's that kind of movie. It's a picaresque film of him and James Belushi going down there.
But it grapples with some of the similar concepts of what is the responsibility of a journalist. And here's specifically a photojournalist. What's really important, he's desperate for money, so everything's about getting money and getting the story.
And then he's confronted with genuine, just genuine horror. Again, I'm not necessarily recommending it to the viewer because it has a scene that is just absolutely, I'm not even going to go into it, incredibly disturbing.
But you can watch the first half hour and you'll get the idea. So I would recommend Salvador. And maybe there's a good biography of Lee Miller out there.
Princeton Dunst is named after, or not named after, but her name is Lee. And when the film starts, we hear her name is Lee, and I thought of instantly, oh, Lee Miller is a famous model-turned-photojournalist, and there's a famous photo of her.
She's taking a bath in Hitler's bathtub, right? Because they kind of stormed the area where Hitler lived, and she's taking a bath. And we have a scene in the film where they talk about Lee's name, and then we cut to her in the bathtub.
But instead of being a triumphant thing, like I'm in, you know, Hitler's bathtub, instead it's she's trying to get away from the horror. She can't stop about the horror of things.
So it's a component of the film that deals with, like, are we saying that we're at a place now where things are not triumphally represented when you're demeaning a photojournalist and said it's really, really tough?
Because it's very on, you would think on the notes when we hear her name is Lee. I thought, gee, that's kind of on the nose. And then a character actually says, hey, like Lee Miller.
It's kind of like, do you see After Earth with Will Smith?
I love After Earth with Will Smith. I love that film.
What's his name? His name is Cypher Rage. So imagine if in After Earth someone goes to him, hey, your name is Cypher Rage.
That's weird because you're kind of a cypher. We don't know about you. And you're dealing with rage a lot.
Luckily, you've got that name.
What does Jett Loe mean?
You know, I keep getting asked all the time about, is that your real name? And my stock answer is, it's my legal name.
Why don't you ask me, are there other films that I'd like to encourage the listener to watch as well as or instead of Civil War?
Oh, well, we're wrapping it up. We've said everything. No, no.
That was a hook. That was an offstage hook that just came. That's it.
I endorse your choice of Salvador.
Great film. It is.
It's an incredibly powerful film. And it seems to come from an area.
And Civil War actually is reminiscent of Salvador because Salvador is fueled by this righteous anger and every shot drips with anger about the state of things and about the injustice of things.
Sometimes about capitalism and why you have to strive for money. Other times about how the strong take advantage of the weak. And Civil War kind of feels that way too.
Can I just say one thing about Nick Offerman? Because I had seen a trailer. So you go into the film, you see the trailer, you assume you're going to see Nick Offerman kind of throughout the movie.
And he only has basically two scenes, one the first scene and the last scene. And the first scene you see him rehearsing for a speech he's about to give.
And what's so clever about the speech, dear listener and Gareth, is that when you watch the speech, he's talking about a triumphant, successful battle that America, his side has had.
You don't realize until, I don't know what, 10 minutes in that everything he said is a lie. Because we were not in the middle of the conflict before we come to this film, as you pointed out at the beginning.
Everybody knows, everybody we're talking about, all the journalists know, oh, this thing's going to be wrapped up in a few weeks. They're over. So Nick Offerman's characters only established that every word coming out of his mouth is a lie.
And so that's done very, very cleverly, I would think, very economically.
And he's not caricatured, and his last words in the film humanize him in a tragic way. But Jett, why don't you ask me if there's films that I'd like to recommend to the listener based on my watching of Civil War?
Okay, sure. Listen, let's say you don't want to watch Civil War.
Or perhaps you do and you want to see something that opens up similar questions.
And the possibilities of peace?
Oh, no, I wouldn't go that far.
What are these other films?
Well, it made me think of two films. One is the recent German version of All Quiet in the Western Front because it's one of those films.
Like you said, you've got the picaresque thing, which is a person on a journey, having their little vignettes along the way. Barry Lyndon probably being the quintessential cinematic picaresque story. But Cold Mountain.
Don't forget about Cold Mountain.
I don't remember.
I guess you have forgotten about Cold Mountain.
Does it constitute a picaresque?
Well, you know what?
I've only said it once.
I mean, it's funny. There are many genuinely thoughtful, meaningful films that just disappear from the public consciousness. And I think it's time for a Cold Mountain renaissance.
We could do a bonus show.
And we should do a bonus show.
I'd like to watch Cold Mountain again, but no, All Quiet in the Western Front, but frankly, an innocent, naive person being initiated through horror. And that's one of the subplots in Civil War as well.
And All Quiet in the Western Front, you know, one of the archetypal anti-war stories.
But for something I think that goes into much greater depth about this question of why groups of people sometimes choose to use aggressive force rather than defensive force to achieve political ends.
I know you haven't seen this yet, Jett, because I've talked to you about this, and I understand why you haven't seen this. I hope you will see this.
Late Night with the Devil? Not Late Night with the Devil.
I know you've seen that and I know you liked it. But no, Andor, the Star Wars prequel.
I have never seen anything that goes into more philosophical and moral political depth about empire narratives and about why some people come to the point of feeling that they have no option but the use of aggressive force.
But beyond that, even when these people make this choice, Andor shows the cost to them, the ambiguity of the choice itself, and the fact that it often doesn't work.
This is the show that has the poor things, Madam, right? As the mom and the witch. The three witches from Macbeth combined into one.
Yes, yes.
Tremendous. I mean, this show has a whole lot more than that, and she's one of the best things about it. And I'm not being facetious when I say a really good companion piece.
To Andor is Scorsese's film, Kundun about the Dalai Lama, because that's about the beginning of the modern iteration of a horrendous oppression whose the survivors of which their political leadership has chosen not to advocate the use of aggressive
force or violence. So along with Civil War, take a look at Kundun and Andor. And please, dear listener, if you're one of our many dear listeners who are about to make a blockbuster movie, a tenant poll, we encourage you and we would gladly help you.
We'd love to be in conversation with you about how to build into those stories, narratives about what we can realistically do to reduce unnecessary political polarization, to restrain ourselves from the use of aggressive force.
And sure, while we're at it, what about some bridge building, some compromise and the possibility of leaning into a better future together? Is it too much to ask?
It's not too much to ask. And there's a version of that has been tried. And then the writers kind of rejected it after a while.
And what I'm talking here, of course, is about season one of Star Trek, The Next Generation. And in season one of Star Trek, The Next Generation, great show. But season one is very different than later seasons.
And one of the things with it is the idea. One of the things that makes the show great is that it's, there's a genuine attempt to imagine humans in the future. So it's not just, you know, a regular show with sci-fi traffic.
I looked at some of the new Star Trek shows, one of the Picards, and it's like, well, this is a generic space opera western. It doesn't have any of the Star Trek DNA as humans have evolved.
And in Season 1 of Star Trek, The Next Generation, the writers were having problems because their writer story guide, the story guide, the Bible said, oh, you know, they don't have conflict.
The crew doesn't have any conflict because humans have gone to a new place. And there's literally seen in, oh, it was a terrible episode, but where Riker says, oh, I can't believe the people use their fists to fight. What?
I have no idea. How do people live? And that's not how Riker talks.
And that was not a person-ish. So I think I could see it as a shortcut. Maybe we can think of it as there's a shortcut to use violence as a form of conflict.
And then more rarefied drama, there's emotional violence. But violence as a tool is, I guess, something that's in your back pocket, easy to pull out for a writer when you need to have some tension.
Sure.
So Civil War is not set in the Colorado where no one is paying attention. Which is a great scene, by the way. I love that.
There was that scene. It's like, do reporters really matter? Do they go to a town where no one's watching the news?
They're not watching the news. So what's the point of doing any of this? Because these people don't care.
They're checked out.
And does a thing exist if it hasn't been photographed? Of course it does. I think part of the challenge our generation is facing is can we experience our experiences without taking photographs of them?
Or without publishing something about them? And I don't want to be puritanical for its own sake. The jury's out on what this is doing to us.
We're in the middle of a huge...
We're at the beginning of a huge debate and or reckoning with social media and the ad...
Hold on a minute. You sound very much like Nick Offerman in his first speech. Civil War.
Dear listener, we're at the beginning of this episode of The Film Talk. Some are already calling it the greatest episode in the history of Film Talk episodes.
Well, it's interesting. This is a less jokey... I mean, I'm always flipping because that's...
You know, I have to... That's how I deal with them.
The best medicine. The best medicine.
It is the best medicine. But I want to recommend one other photojournalist film. And again, it's a very difficult watch.
And this is, for me, the quintessential photojournalist film, even though we don't actually see... Well, we do see a photojournalist in it. I actually want to think about it.
I was so hoping you were going to say Moana.
My...
Okay, no. Everybody loves Moana.
Babette's Feast is tremendous. Shall I keep going? The Ten Commandments.
The Ten Commandments.
Yes. Well, when Moses came down carrying the Ten Commandments, and you noticed he had a Leica around his neck, he tried to get a photo of God, but his exposure didn't work. No, there's a film that I saw, Gareth.
I want you to guess the film in which I had seen maybe three or four times.
I'm ready to guess.
I had seen three or four times when I was younger. And then when I became, you know, when I was directing TV, I started taking photographs on my own, and they had a whole separate world there. And then I literally got employed as a photojournalist.
And then I saw the film again after I'd been working as a full-time photojournalist for two years, and it was transformative because I realized, oh, my goodness, oh, my goodness, this whole film, a whole section of it, maybe the second half is about
photojournalism, or it's a way of being a photojournalist for someone who never actually was a war photographer. What is the film, Gar?
I need more. I mean, you've said it's a good film about a photojournalist that you watched four times.
Well, give me a little bit more.
Is it set on planet Earth?
It is set on planet.
Okay, is it set in the 23rd century?
It is not set in the 23rd century.
Is it set in the... Set in the 60s. In our lifetime, set in the 60s.
Set in the 60s.
Is it set in the United States?
The first half is.
The first half is set in the United States.
50% of it.
Then the photojournalist leaves the United States and goes to somewhere to take photographs.
It's not about...
There is a photojournalist in it, but that's not why this is a great photojournalist movie. Okay, here's what the deal is.
What I realized when I saw it again after becoming a photojournalist is that this person never had the experience of being a war photographer.
So instead, he created a giant war set and was able to walk around operating the camera as if he was a war photographer. Here's the hint. You'll get it now.
He was a successful photojournalist with a major American magazine.
Oh, so it's a Kubrick film.
It's Full Metal Jacket. So he was never a war photographer, but instead he built a Vietnam set and he was able to operate the camera.
In the London Darklands.
Yes, and the second half of the film is his war photojournalism. And you can see this even in Dr. Strangelove.
Dr. Strangelove varied classical film setups. The camera is relatively steady.
And then it cuts to an attack on American base by other Americans, so hints of Civil War. And it cuts to what appears to be handheld real footage camera of people fighting each other.
And I'm sure that was Kubrick himself with a 16mm or whatever he's carrying doing that. So he never had the experience of being a war photojournalist. Instead, he recreated for himself.
Like he recreated New York for Eyes Wide Shut. Does that make sense?
It absolutely makes sense.
So that's my recommendation. If Salvador is too much for a full metal jacket.
And take a look at Andor and all quite the Western Front as well. Serious question.
These are all feel good pictures.
Serious question. And to a degree unanswerable. But a serious question.
Nonetheless, having lived in the North of Ireland, where you witnessed a peace process unfold, has largely succeeded. What do you think people who care about the future of this society should do?
Regular, ordinary people like you and me, assuming we don't have the power of the presidency under our belt. What do you seriously think people should do? To try to reduce polarization, or is reducing polarization the thing we should be aiming for?
You know, coming out of the pandemic, we had so few, at least I did, interactions in the physical space.
Now, when I'm interacting with people, I think about them much more, because they were so rare for a long time.
And what has struck me, and this is me being in New Mexico, I can't speak to where you are or other folks around the world to listen to the show. I know from our stats, looking at the various podcast platforms, we have a lot of listeners.
Maybe the majority in the big cities are in places like London. Is how kind people are. Little individual acts of kindness.
If you go through your day being kind, treating others as you want to be treated, I understand that's an old adage. That's an old rule. That does so much.
I think people are fundamentally good. And just be kind to folks. I live in an area.
I live 7,000 feet up in the mountains of New Mexico. Very rural area. And there are big Trump flags.
But I've never had a negative interaction with anybody. I'm always trying to be kind. And people are always kind back.
Now maybe if things went bad, they might look at me and go, what kind of American are you? But I think we start with kindness.
And then from that, those who have the time, formalize that kindness into structures and organizations where we find the common good. The strength of our common good is stronger than those that would divide us. Nick Offerman, Civil War.
It sounds like you're declaring a candidacy.
Thank you for saying that. I want to say something about you. Dear listener, you may not know this about Jett.
Oh, God.
But one of the things that I noticed about you, Jett, whenever we first got to know each other, we would go into shops in Belfast.
I remember we'd go into, there was a post office on Bedford Street.
I remember very, like I have a very clear memory of going into the post office beside the Elster Hall on Bedford Street and you saying to the woman behind the counter, hey, how are you doing? You know, in your kind of cheery way.
And the woman behind the counter, like almost having this, she wasn't shocked or intimidated, but she was surprised that somebody was that forthright because our culture wasn't... I mean, that's a very US American thing to do. Hey, how are you doing?
US American.
But what I noticed over time was it would call forth a response from other people.
There is this theory, as you know, the theory of mimesis and mimetic rivalry, which is that we imitate each other.
Yes, of course. Who doesn't know that? What are you?
You don't know about mimesis? I'll have a mimesis. How's the mimesis here?
I understand you do it with your own fresh orange juice.
You can do a virgin mimesis with our champagne.
You can, but you want to go the classic mimesis.
The future depends on people being kind to each other. So let me talk about mimesis.
How is your niece doing? Your nieces? Are your nieces doing okay?
Oh my Lord.
The French social theorist René Girard evolved this idea that human beings don't want what we want because we want it. We want what we want because we think somebody else wants it. So we're imitating other people's desires.
And it is an incomplete understanding of this theory to say that we only rival with each other in terms of keeping up with the Joneses or I want to have things that they don't want to have or want to have more than my neighbor has.
It is actually true that when people show up with kindness, it generally calls forth kindness in somebody else. So I think you're absolutely right.
The single most important thing anyone of us can do is have eye contact, slow things down a little bit more, say hello to strangers.
There's a couple of other things, but you have that look on your face and you have your pen in your mouth, which is implying...
Well, I don't want to spoil anything for you.
This episode about the potential greatest threat facing the country that we're in should just end. And I shouldn't say anything about the legitimate needs that underlie all behavior. Or the problem with the starfish analogy.
I don't want to spoil anything for you here, but don't forget also when I was in Belfast at that time, I was playing a character because I was doing another show.
I was playing Jett Loe. You mean that kindness wasn't real? I don't think so.
We weren't recording.
I'm always recording.
You've been doing a reality show since before there were shows.
Two things, Marshall Rosenberg, who developed the method of conflict transformation called nonviolent communication, said that underneath every action, there is a legitimate need.
The question is, how legitimate is the way we're trying to get that need met?
And so a next step beyond kindness is to try to pay attention what people think their legitimate needs are and enter into dialogue about what are more or less legitimate ways of getting those legitimate needs met.
And the other thing is about the problem with the starfish analogy.
I don't know. Starfish in Mimesis, they opened for fish at the Las Vegas Sphere.
That was just there. So there's a parable about many thousands of starfish have been thrown up onto the sea and where I guess it's called drowning when a fish is in the air.
They're drowning in the air and someone walks along and he sees a child throw one starfish at a time back into the water to save its life. And the person says to the child, well, that's not doing any good, there's a starfish here.
And the child picks up another starfish, throws it back in and says, well, it made a difference to that one. And then they pick up another one and it made a difference to that one.
And that's a lovely parable, but it's actually not true because there is never only one person choosing to invest in helping.
The truth would be there'd always be a few dozen people or when someone sees one person pick up a starfish and throw it back into the sea, they're going to join in. And that's what I mean about we don't have...
There aren't too many blockbuster movies that tell that kind of story. There certainly aren't too many headline news reports that tell that kind of story.
And the paradox is that kind of thing where people behave with kindness, creativity and sometimes a little bit of courage is being mirrored and magnified all the time.
So it's like that viral video of the dancers at the electronic music festival on the hill and one guy is dancing and then like 10 seconds later another person is dancing. And then 20 seconds later, three or four.
And then it's like you're a roll of avalanche of dancing or avalanche of kindness. Let me write that down.
We're going to host the first TFT avalanche of kindness in-person dance event coming to a sphere near you. Or perhaps we'll just do it online. We have an online avalanche of kindness dance meetup for the listeners.
We can.
I don't know if anybody wants to see me dance. That's not a pretty sight. I'm still recovering.
I just got back from Las Vegas for the National Association of Broadcatchers Convention. At my hotel, the balcony was right next to the sphere across the street from it. So that giant thing was blasting.
They were probably blasting your favorite director, Darren Aronofsky.
Well, inside, but the outside of the sphere was a giant emoji.
Yes.
Lovely. Well, would if enough... I hate to be mercenary about this, but if enough of the dear listener were to become paying subscribers, would you dance for them?
Sort of like a dance monkey boy?
Yes, exactly. You know what? We can put a little checkbox on the Patreon if they want to see me dance.
And I will certainly take the money. There's no question that we'll take the money and keep the show going. Where do folks go if they want to subscribe to the show?
They get bonus episodes.
All the various and amazing podcast platforms, I believe, are carrying The Film Talk. And if you want to become a subscriber, patreon.com/ The Film Talk.
And we are delighted to share these thoughts with you and make them available to anybody, whether you can subscribe or not. We've always said, I know that times are tough for many people. And so we don't want the money to get in the way.
And the more people who subscribe, the more time will be resourced to be able to give to this show. And thank you to those of you who have sent kind messages along the way.
A review on Apple Podcasts, particularly if it's a good one, would be extremely helpful to get the word out. Because we want to be in conversation with lots of people about these meaningful things.
Yeah, and I really enjoy it. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the Facebook, but we had a legacy Facebook page from when we did the show 10 years ago. And I was surprised.
Chuck, my god, it's still there. Facebook is holding on that we can still monetize these guys. And so you can go to facebook.com.
That's what I'm thinking Mark Zuckerberg is doing. He's there in his office. I'm assuming he has an office somewhere.
Hoping that The Film Talk makes him rich?
Yeah, maybe he lives in the sphere or something.
And he's like, we got to monetize these guys. Go to facebook.com/ The Film Talk. Well, this has been kind of a picaresque show, much like Civil War.
I'm in a carriage being taken by a horse to the 17th century inn for some mead.
Is this a Cold Mountain reference or?
That was the 19th century.
That was the 19th century.
That's what I thought.
Berlin was the 18th century.
Well, why are you in the 17th century? You're talking about Caribbean pirates. You're on the set of Caribbean pirates.
Gentle Jesse. The ship is coming. Oh, no, we're going to be pillaged.
Oh, no, it's Gentle Jesse. Thank goodness we needed that flower and literacy lessons.
He even does gluten free.
That's classic. Hashtag Gentle Jesse. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been quite a show.
I'm Jett Loe.
I'm Gareth Higgins. We'll keep talking.
Sometime. If we can monetize the show.
You'll dance. You'll maybe dance.
Chances are slim.