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Tag: Stephen McKinley Henderson

QuickView: Civil War (2024)

14 April 2025 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“Once you start asking those questions you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record so other people ask.”

Lee

Alex Garland’s timely depiction of a USA descended into civil war will hit too close for some, while not engaging in sufficient reflection for others. Garland makes a deliberate choice to sidestep party politics — the secessionists Western Forces are led by red and blue states and the President’s affiliation is never confirmed (some Trumpian rhetoric in the opening scene notwithstanding). This understandable decision leaves a void in the fictional world building, with little explanation or examination of how the nation collapsed. Yet watching Civil War just a year after release, one finds these gaps at least partially filled by real events. Instead, the war-torn country provides a backdrop for a road trip movie as a group of journalists make a dangerous journey to attempt to interview the President before he is deposed. Photojournalist protagonists allow for real immediacy in the action as they (and the cameras) move in amongst fighters as well as justifying more beautiful cinematography than might be considered appropriate for violent subject matter. Kirsten Dunst excels as Lee (her name a nod to acclaimed WW2 photographer Lee Miller), a veteran war photographer who unwillingly takes on a young protégé, torn between the desire to nurture talent and protect her from inevitable trauma. Dunst succeeds in depicting this through Lee’s hardened shell, her face usually stern, eyes searching and analysing. Cailee Spaeny, who evidently impressed Garland in Devs, provides a fresh and eager audience perspective. I found the film frequently reminiscent of Monsters with its personal story unfolding against the backdrop of a dangerous journey and threatening environment. Although the plot amounts to little more than a series of vignettes along the trip, we find significant depth in each of the central characters as events unfold. Civil War is routinely nerve-wracking, with its final assault on the White House as tense as any war film. Like the Homefront videogames, it is the surreality of placing military violence within the USA the proves particularly arresting for a Western audience — by turns tragic and disturbing, emphasised by the familiarity.

8/10

QuickView: Beau is Afraid (2023)

14 December 2023 | | Reading Time: 2 minutes | 0 Comments

“I really thought I was gonna die, my whole life.”

Beau Wassermann

A darling of the A24 production company, writer/director Ari Aster’s third feature is A24’s most expensive to date, an anxiety-ridden, absurdist dark comedy that displays flashes of brilliance within its messy and often inscrutable three hours. Ostensibly about a man’s fraught journey home to visit his mother, Beau is repeatedly waylaid by strangers in a narratively loose series of surreal events in the vein of the Coens’ O Brother, Where Art Though? This is not so direct an adaptation of The Odyssey but its influence is evident. Pawel Pogorzelski, who has shot all of Aster’s feature films, has his work cut out here as each sequence adopts a wildly different style, from the agoraphobic terror of a city block and a sitcom-bright house in the suburbs to a nighttime forest and a vibrantly saturated handmade landscape of cardboard set dressing — it must have been like shooting a dozen short films at once. The through-line is Joaquin Phoenix’s performance as the neurotic Beau, though this is far from his best work as he stumbles through in dazed paranoia. More interesting are the repeated glimpses of his mother and his childhood as the source of his fragile state, with memories bubbling to the surface, often literally emerging through water. Presented entirely from Beau’s unreliable perspective, Aster provides little opportunity for the viewer to find their footing within this heightened reality — a challenging experience that some will relish. As the credits appear over an audience silently shuffling out of a vast auditorium, there is no question that Beau is Afraid is an audacious endeavour but it is hard to tell if we have travelled any distance at all.

6/10

QuickView: Causeway (2022)

20 June 2023 | | Reading Time: < 1 minute | 0 Comments

“If it get dark now, you just ride it.”

James

Ostensibly about a soldier recovering from PTSD after a tour in Afghanistan, Causeway broadens its focus midway into a wider examination of trauma outside its initial military context. Within the space of a smaller film, Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry have the freedom to deliver understated and introspective performances as new friends trying to heal. The Louisiana setting provides an uncomfortable environment in its oppressive heat, but the slower pace of life also makes the sudden friendship ring truer. Lynsey is not presented lazily as merely a victim and her growth ultimately requires dealing with a past that she has sought to outrun. Free of fiery flashbacks — the frequently used cinematic language that inaccurately depicts trauma — Causeway instead presents the more innocuous impacts like memory loss and sudden waves of debilitating emotion. Observational rather than explosive, Neuberger’s debut feature might not be ambitious in its reach, but it firmly grasps what it touches.

7/10

QuickView: Lady Bird (2017)

9 May 2018 | | Reading Time: < 1 minute | 0 Comments

“I want you to be the very best version of yourself that you can be.”

Marion McPherson

An alternative coming-of-age film, the focus is Catholic high school girl Christine (who has adopted the name “Lady Bird”) and her turbulent relationship with her mother. This is an unusually well-realised mother/daughter relationship, in which they both know they love one another, yet their strong-willed personalities frequently grate. Saoirse Ronan deftly avoids portraying Lady Bird as quirky for its own sake, instead making it a believable element of her awkward teenage self-expression, whilst still anxious about the perception of her wealthier peers. Religion largely takes a back seat to the more human elements of the story, in what struck me as a female counterpoint to Richard Linklater’s films about male adolescence.

8/10

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

(CC) BY-NC 2003-2025 Priyan Meewella

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