Civil War 2024 And the blunting about war imagery

After watching the movie Civil War (2024), I wanted to write about what I thought of the film. But I was unable to find the right words. I only was able to write this:

I watched this movie the other night and it is still with me. It is a long time since I had such a visceral reaction to a movie. And I can’t decide whether I liked it or not.

⤑ Civil War.

Today, I was writing a letter to a friend and finally found the right words. What has been bothering me about this movie ever since I watched it? There are two parts to it. The first is that it is practically war documentation. The angle of how it is filmed and the movie’s main characters. It feels like watching a news segment about a war in a distant country. But as it is so common (or was so common watching the news as a child), I’ve grown accustomed to these images – and they don’t bother me. It always happens far, far away, and it does not touch my life here in Switzerland. But with this movie, it was somehow different (and actually, it was also different at the beginning of the war in Ukraine). It touched me on a much more personal level. And not because it is geographically near but because it is culturally near to me? I’m not sure I should categorize it this way, but it is how I feel about it. Although I have a lot of shame connected with these thoughts as well. I should always be touched no matter where it happens. Not only when it happens in my neighborhood.

The second thing that bothered me about the movie was that it felt like an episode of The Walking Dead, with all the destruction and hopelessness in the film. It has been a long time since I have been actively watching this series. I stopped watching it once I realized there would never be a happy ending for the main cast (it took me embarrassingly many seasons of the series to realize that—I think it was until season 6).

You need to stop caring at some point, or all the negativity will consume you. I’m not proud of this solution, but it is how I can cope with the world at large currently.

• /writing
• /movies
• /war