Category: Art

Movie review: Civil War (2024)

What is so disappointing about Alex Garland’s Civil War is that it completely misses the point about war photography. Garland had an opportunity to really explore how photography can create huge cultural touchstones that amplify the impact of, often relatively small, real-world events. This is why war photographers put themselves at risk – to portray meaning. And Garland decides to make a story devoid of meaning.

There are so many examples of well known war photography that has contributed to our culture, but one stands out to me.

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Replaying war crimes on a film set

I’ve read a lot about the Vietnam/American War, both nonfiction and fiction. It was this conflict in particular that helped me finally grok the immense failure of sentience at the heart of warfare, and the horrors of capitalist and colonialist conflicts.

In Vietnam, class, race and culture collided in the context of a truly hellish war, exposing the hypocrisy of Western society through the blood of millions of young Americans and Vietnamese.

Obviously that conflict changed our world in many ways. I don’t think its profundity can be overstated.

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no content

There is a Buddhist saying: “Statements about the nature of the ultimate truth have no content.”

Polish artist Zdzisław Beksiński was opposed to people analysing his work or even interpreting it. He stated that if he wanted to say something, he would say it. A painting, however, was a unique expression of something beyond language. Interpretation immediately destroys that.

“Meaning is meaningless to me,” he once said. He didn’t even give his paintings titles.

Yet it is immensely tempting to apply meaning to his work – especially considering he grew up surrounded by war, genocide, and suffering. The corpse-like figures that populate his paintings are reminiscent of the starved bodies of holocaust victims. German helmets and Greco-Roman architecture evoke the Third Reich. Vast towering cathedrals of bone and flesh link human endeavour with misery and doom.

And of course, these words ultimately do nothing to convey the depth of his paintings. There will always be something missing.

These words have no content.

beksinski