Review of A Private War (2018) by Bertaut1 — 27 Feb 2019

Not a patch on Under the Wire but still pretty solid.

Telling the story of the last decade or so of Sunday Times' foreign affairs correspondent Marie Colvin (Rosamund Pike), and based on Marie Brenner's 2012 Vanity Fair article, "Marie Colvin's Private War", the film is nowhere near the quality of Chris Martin's exceptional Under the Wire (2018), a documentary about Colvin's last assignment, and how her photographer Paul Conroy (Jamie Dornan) got out of Syria after her death. Wisely, screenwriter Arash Amel and director Matthew Heineman choose not to tell the same story as Martin, focusing more on Colvin's life in London and her previous assignments. This makes sense, as the story of how Conroy got out is a movie unto itself, and it's a story that's definitively told in the documentary.

With this in mind, A Private War has its own merits. Avoiding hagiography, Heineman doesn't shy away from some of the darker aspects of Colvin's character (her refusal to accept she was suffering from PTSD, her alcoholism, her acerbity, her hygiene), with the film more interested in asking why she did what she did. It's by no means perfect, with some awful dialogue, scenes so on-the-nose you might need rhinoplasty after watching them, a tendency to over-simplify complex socio-political elements as binary oppositions, and an uneven central performance. However, it's a respectfully told story, the material is treated in a suitably serious manner.

Although A Private War spends time showing us Colvin's assignments in Sri Lanka, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, it's just as interested in depicting the mental price she paid for her work. Examining how she processed the things she saw (or didn't process them). The film runs with the premise that Colvin was correct when she argued that the real stories of war are not the socio-political causes of the conflict or the military engagements, but the civilians caught in the crossfire. Despite her honourable intentions, however, the film suggests that Colvin was simply addicted to the adrenaline, doing what she did as much for her own personal need as her commitment to a greater truth.

The film also spends time on Colvin's private life, attempting to humanise her. An especially telling scene in this regard concerns her eye injury, which she lost after being hit by shrapnel in Sri Lanka. After asserting that she is unconcerned about losing her eye, we see her alone, looking at the injury in a mirror, with Pike conveying her sense of loss brilliantly. In another scene, she stands in front of a full-length mirror, completely naked, looking at herself with a curious sense of wonder. These moments reveal as much about her as the more expositionary dialogue-heavy scenes do, and Pike's performance in these wordless scenes is really quite extraordinary.

Elsewhere, however, the performance is a little uneven. Pike captures Colvin's mannerisms, but there are several scenes that don't ring emotionally true. In particular, a scene in which Colvin berates her editor Paul Ryan (Tom Hollander) for his lack of trust in her has the feel of someone overacting, with little sense of psychological verisimilitude. Pike is certainly intense, and her impression of Colvin is uncanny, but it takes more than an intense impression to anchor a real-life character.

Although A Private War does suffer from the occasional clunky bit of dialogue and a slightly uneven central performance, it's a strong film. Telling a different story than Under the Wire, it doesn't shy away from the darker aspects of Colvin's life, presenting her in a non-hagiographic manner, as someone fundamentally damaged by what she does. Unafraid of examining her careerism and setting it beside a more humanitarian and philanthropic interpretation of her work, Heineman and Amel also address the price that all war correspondents must risk paying, irrespective of why they are there in the first place. The film is deeply respectful of both the craft and the courage of such people, not the least of whom was Colvin herself. At one point, she claims, "I see it so you don't have to". Heineman, however, suggests that she saw it so that the rest of could see it too.