Debates over Civil War overlook Kirsten Dunst’s most important scene

Alex Garland’s A24 movie Civil War has kicked off a vast, circular online debate over the way Garland frames his story, with minimal background detail about what led to the titular civil war or what the country’s various factions stand for. The argument over how, whether, and to what degree the film represents the actual state of 2024 America has overshadowed a lot of the conversation Garland actually wanted viewers to have after watching his movie. And in particular, it overlooks some of the movie’s finer nuances — like the crucial moment that really defines Civil War’s story.

Civil War focuses on two photographers: war-weary veteran photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) and naïve but skilled newbie Jessie (Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny). When Lee and her longtime writing partner Joel (Wagner Moura) set out on a cross-country trip to Washington, D.C., Jessie eels her way into joining them, along with aging journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Lee and Joel hope to interview the president (Nick Offerman) before separatist forces take the capital. Jessie and Sammy just want to make sure they’re in the right place to witness and report on the new, crucial phase of history unfolding in America.

Over the course of the film, which Garland wrote and directed, it’s increasingly obvious that Lee is burnt out, depressed, and suffering from PTSD. When her friends rush into combat to capture the moment, she cringes or cowers. She witnesses a raging forest fire from close range with a blank, thousand-yard stare. And she tries, again and again, to dissuade Jessie from coming on the trip, or from pursuing war journalism at all. Lee’s war-honed instincts let her protect Jessie from danger, and she takes charge in volatile situations, walking Jessie through the ways a journalist in a war zone can navigate threats. But Lee also lectures and belittles Jessie, as if she wishes she could retroactively talk her own younger self out of the career path she chose.

Their relationship sharply mirrors the veteran/protégé relationship between two women in 28 Days Later, one of Garland’s first film projects: His script for that movie also has a hardened, experienced woman (Naomie Harris) taking a younger one (Megan Burns) under her wing, with a fair bit of exasperation over the unwanted responsibility, and maybe just a touch of relief at being able to externalize her own anxiety by looking after someone else. But Civil War adds another layer to the dynamic by making Lee and Jessie professionals in the same field — compatriots, but also potential competitors. They both seem to be idealists who want to document what’s happening in America, to bring back a record of what the country went through.

All of which leads up to that key moment for Civil War, a single, silent shot in the back half of their journey.

[Ed. note: Major spoilers ahead for Civil War, including end spoilers.]

Lee and Jessie never reveal to each other why they chose careers in journalism, or why war correspondence in particular. Their personal motives, much like the broader motives behind the war, have to be gleaned from small moments and scattered dialogue throughout the film. Instead, they have a heart-to-heart about cameras. Lee uses a digital camera; Jessie shoots on film, and develops that film herself with a portable chemical kit. It’s a remarkably old-school way for a young woman to pursue her craft, apart from the way she repurposes an iPhone (otherwise useless in a cell-phone-signal-free nation) as a slide viewer. But Jessie is adamant about capturing images the way her father did.

Why is a little downtime tech talk about the tools of the trade such an important conversation to capture? For one, it lets Lee and Jessie bond as equals rather than as “wise elder and upstart kid,” which becomes critical later on. For another, it gives the audience one of their few insights into what drives Jessie’s passion. She dives into pitched battle situations like a zealot, oblivious to danger, but never fully verbalizes why photography is so important to her. Taking a little time to talk about the tactility of film gives her a softer, more human side than a lot of the rest of the movie, which sometimes treats her as an audience avatar — the new arrival in unnerving situations where she isn’t quite sure how to behave — and sometimes treats her as bait to lure Lee into danger.

But more importantly, the exchange about cameras highlights Lee’s devotion to digital, a medium that lets her shoot and store a lot more images than Jessie can, but that also gives her the option to literally erase history if she sees fit. And when she does, she offers the most telling character beat in the entire film.

Image: A24/Everett Collection

That moment comes after a harrowing encounter with a handful of heavily armed locals led by an unnamed man in camo and red sunglasses, played by Jesse Plemons. When those locals kill some of Lee and Joel’s press colleagues, Sammy zooms up in Joel’s truck to intervene and get their group to safety. During that rescue, though, he gets shot, and he slowly bleeds out as they make their way to safety. Lee grimly takes a picture of his body, slumped in the driver’s seat, a sheet of his blood spread out across the side of the truck.

And then she silently contemplates that image on the screen of her camera, and decides to delete it.

Like so much in Civil War, this moment never gets a big expository speech where Lee reveals what she’s thinking. It’s entirely likely that different viewers will see radically different motives in the moment. (Which is fine; Garland says he prefers to let people get whatever they want out of his movies.) Is Lee offering her friend some final dignity by not passing on an image of his corpse to her news agency, Reuters, and turning it into a product to sell? Or is she just showing, once again, that she’s tired of war, tired of death, tired of being a witness to atrocity on other people’s behalf? Does she delete the picture for her own sake, because she doesn’t want to ever have to look at Sammy’s body again? And if so, is it because she’s guilty about the brutal things she said to him before the trip began, or guilty because she survived and he didn’t? Or is it something else entirely? The specifics are up to your interpretation.

What’s clear and unequivocal about the moment, though, is that Lee effectively chooses to edit the national record of the war, erasing this one image and ensuring that it’s something the future will never see. Sammy will be buried, the truck will be cleaned, and for most people, life will move on. Lee’s job is to capture this kind of moment so it won’t be forgotten, so other people in other places can understand and experience the war and its costs. But she decides, in the moment, whether from guilt or respect or exhaustion, to remove Sammy’s death from the record. The moment shows how much power journalists have to shape a story, and how their responsibility may be divided between what they want for their audience and what they want for their subjects. It’s also a powerful touch of character-building, where Lee exerts control over the narrative for her own private reasons.

Image: A24/Everett Collection

That scene is all the more significant for the way it shapes the movie’s final moments. During the final White House raid, Jessie once again recklessly charges into the line of fire, and Lee is fatally shot while pushing her to safety. Lee dies so Jessie can live, and it’s the obvious capstone of a story about one generation passing the torch to the next — a cynic leaving the stage to make room for an idealist who will probably eventually become a cynic in turn, if she lives long enough.

Jessie responds to the moment by taking her own picture of Lee’s body, memorializing her as part of the record in turn. We see that picture taken, and see the picture itself, implying that the image survived the sometimes risky process of film development and printing. It’s a fascinating parallel: two different journalists making choices about how to report on the death of a colleague who saved their life, and how to share that death with the world. Both women’s choices are in keeping with their characters and their response to war — one turning aside from it, the other capturing it for posterity at any cost.

Civil War doesn’t tell the audience what they should make of these choices. That’s Garland’s style these days, for better or worse: He throws images onto the screen, and leaves it to individual viewers to discuss and decide what he’s getting at. Often, the things he chooses to omit or elide are more crucial to the story he’s telling than the things he does choose to elaborate on.

But while the nature and causes of the war in Civil War are certainly worth talking about, the small, personal story beats where people make significant choices are just as important. Lee’s moment with the picture of Sammy is a tiny fragment of the story, easily missed in the cacophony of the greater conflict. But it’s also the moment that sets up the end of the movie, and that reveals the most about Garland’s intentions. Civil War isn’t just a movie about what choices led the country into war, or what choices different states made in who to ally with and what goals to pursue. It’s about individual choices, both in and out of crisis, and how those choices affect the future.

Garland doesn’t vilify Lee for deleting her memento of a lifesaving friend. He doesn’t condemn Jessie for seizing the moment and documenting her loss, either. But he does show how different two people can be, even in the same profession, in the same conflict, in the same moment in history — and in just a handful of wordless shots.