Is ‘Civil War’ a Warning… or a Preview?
English writer-director Alex Garland casts an outsider’s eye on a wholly American dystopia. The result? A domestic war you can’t look away from.
Civil War opens with a televised address. The U.S. President (Nick Offerman) has a silver slickback, a red tie and a smooth tongue. It might feel like your standard “My Fellow Americans…” movie scene. Except this guy has disbanded the FBI and stuck around unlawfully to rule for a third term. Seems the United States aren’t quite so united in this reality.
In the latest A24 feature, English writer-director Alex Garland (28 Days Later, Ex Machina, Men) is determined to tell a story about disunity without taking a side. To pull that off, we see this civil war through the eyes of those who are tasked to report on it impartially: journalists Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and rookie photographer Jessie (Venice Film Festival Best Actress winner, Cailee Spaeny).
Their journey from NYC to Washington DC is the gas in Civil War’s tank. Their goal? Getting an interview, somehow, from the dictator President as his government (and country) crumbles around him. But in this near-future warzone, a road trip means facing violent militiamen, desperate looters, and dead bodies strung up and hanging from freeway overpasses.
As journalists, there are questions they now need to pose themselves. How involved do they get in order to tell the story? Is it even possible to capture this stark horror? And with their lives literally in danger, is the value of their reporting worth the risk? We’re with Jessie for this moral reckoning, as her camera — and her conscience — struggle to take in a new American reality.
What does Civil War have to say about political extremism?
Just a hunch, but Civil War might have more than a few gun-totin’, flag-wavin’ patriots salivating at a movie that blasts America back to greatness against the “snowflakes” and elites. Similarly, those on the left probably expect the film to be a thinly-veiled condemnation of the Trump era — about how an egomaniacal leader can whip right-wing followers into a fervour of intolerance. But neither side will find their positions affirmed and supported here.
Instead, Garland gives us an anti-polemic: there is no blame, no “your side is the problem.” The film presents the clean facts, stark and confronting, and we’re free to use our reasoning to draw our own conclusions. We’re not spoonfed the timeframe, which party is in power, or the actions that led to this chaos. Was it a series of small liberties, strategically stripped away, that eventually broke the collective camel’s back? Or did the President enact some gross, sweeping measure that snapped society’s composure like a twig? What YEAR are we even in?
“Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fucking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous.”
~ Alex Garland on modern-day political division
Civil War doesn’t waste the time to justify the scenes — they simply ARE. The film gains an immense power this way. Events are presented as reality, and their differences to normality lend them a highly cogent shock value. The power in the journo’s hotel blinks on and off, water is running low, the Wi-Fi is shit… okay, not too dramatic. But seeing zero traffic on the streets of New York, “FUCK THE USA” graffitied onto skyscrapers and the burnt, crumpled husk of a downed helicopter rusting in a shopping centre carpark, the new normal begins to hit home.
It’s an indictment on our comparative western comfort that with these images, Garland (a non-American, don’t forget) is seemingly tempting us to shout, Wait! These look like “foreign” scenes. Doesn’t this stuff only happen in Gaza, or Lebanon, or a country ending in -stan? Seeing them in a domestic setting is unnerving; it’s a shock, a slap to wake us up. As if to say, whether you were hard left or hard right before, it doesn’t matter anymore. This is not a drill. The American flag has TWO STARS on it now. There are people lying face down dead in the streets.
How does Civil War examine the role of the press?
Like it or not, we live in a post-COVID world of clickbait “news” and “alternative facts”. The press no longer have the greatest rep. In movies, journalists used to be hard-bitten, Woodward and Bernstein types (think of Spotlight for a more recent example of detailed, ethical journalism). Now it’s anyone with a smartphone. Garland attempts to drag back our respect for the press, giving us the perspective of people who willingly step into literal gunfire to get the story told.
“I feel like one of the bits of fabric that’s unravelling around us is the way journalists are attacked and not trusted … We’re seeing the consequences of that happening like little wildfires all around us. I wanted to make them heroes.”
~ Alex Garland on journalistic integrity
We get the sense of danger early: Jessie is nearly shot while she’s covering a street riot, and Lee pulls her to safety. It’s the first time they’ve met. Jessie admits that Lee’s one of her heroes of photojournalism, but wide-eyed idealism doesn’t register much to Lee anymore. She’s seen it all, while Jessie’s green as grass, begging to join their attempt to reach DC. Sammy, the elder statesman of the group, doesn’t sugarcoat the risks. “They shoot journalists on sight at the capital, you know. They see us the same as the insurrectionists.”
On the road, Lee isn’t warm to Jessie. She’s irritated that she’s been forced to take a rookie under her wing. Jessie asks Lee, if she was to get shot on the journey, would Lee photograph her as she lies bleeding? Lee replies, sans emotion: “Whadda you think?” Above it all, she still has a job to do.
When the group stop for fuel, they encounter some locals who’ve taken the phrase “unlawful justice” to extremes, stringing up and publicly assaulting a pair of looters — basically torturing them, “until we figure out what to do with ‘em.” It’s Jessie’s first realisation that she’s stepped up to the grown-ups’ table: if she wants to do her job, she needs to put her emotions on hold. She’s so shocked by the closeup violence, she forgets she even has a camera in her hands (something she’s furious with herself about later).
By contrast, Lee has no hesitation pointing her lens impassively at the brutalised and bleeding thieves. It’s photojournalism’s inherent Catch-22: witnessing the horrors of war must have a compounding effect on the soul… up to a point. So what about after that point, when it doesn’t affect you at all? Isn’t that somehow more horrifying?
Garland shows us the women’s photos in real time, frozen on screen as they take them. Interestingly, while Lee’s photos are in colour, Jessie’s are in black and white. She chooses to shoot film on her Dad’s old Nikon, developing the negatives herself, despite the hassle. Why? Besides the nostalgic family link, it’s an instant statement on old versus new media; digital versus analogue. Jessie may be the newbie — only 23, green and frightened — but she’s good. In Garland’s story, she represents the values of trusted reporting from a bygone age.
How does Civil War put its impact on screen?
It’s tough to overstate just how effective Garland’s filmmaking choices are at bringing the savagery of Civil War’s very uncivil war to life. The use of sound (particularly silence), focus, slow motion and music all deepen the experience in stunning ways. There are images here that we’ve seen before, but never quite in this context — like the crashed helicopter mentioned earlier, or the alarming slow-motion shot of a Black man tied inside a truck tyre, being set alight and burning alive… in a “regular” New York City street. It’s already shocking, but the domestic juxtaposition adds powerful aftershocks.
This goes for the soundtrack too, a clutch of eclectic 70s-era, LSD fuelled needle-drops that, while not taking the piss, exactly, indicate that Civil War is highly self-aware. Garland knows that “war porn” is a thing, and the prominently vivid music choices seem to raise one eyebrow at the notion that anyone would be here for fun. As The Wrap writes, “It’s gorgeous, but in a deeply nightmarish way.”
The same goes for the frankness in which Civil War presents really intense life or death stuff. When a soldier is shot in the abdomen, we see founts of dark red spurting blood, and it’s obvious he’s doomed. There’s a frightening impassiveness to the shot choices — as if to say, this is just normal now. It’s not silly graphic violence, it’s realistic graphic violence. Again, the starkness here is what lends Civil War its genuine impact. It’s just a wow.
So what’s the takeaway from Civil War?
In case it wasn’t obvious, this isn’t more war porn. There’s no mega-explosions or grizzled marines yelling at troops to “lock and load!” It’s a properly weighted drama, with a really satisfying texture, some truly shocking moments, and a genuinely compelling “what if” at its core.
“I’m provoking the question, why are they together?
What would be so important as a threat that the polarised politics between Texas and California was suddenly seen as less important than the threat?”
~ Alex Garland on the Californian-Texan alliance in Civil War
Civil War also feels thrillingly, disturbingly authentic, and this ‘realness’ clangs like a warning bell. We take our own peaceful democracy as a given, but it isn’t Hollywood fantasy to imagine a near future where our social order has broken down. If history is any guide, societal collapse isn’t just possible — it’s inevitable.
We won’t spoil it, but the aural savagery of the Washington finale is potent. To quote Siddhant Adlakha, writing for Inverse, “you can practically taste the gunpowder lingering in the air.” Just metres from the White House barricades, it’s a brutal assault; one that galvanises Jessie with a new kind of fearlessness. After nearly being summarily executed, Jessie admits, “I’ve never been scared like that before. And I’ve never felt more alive.”
Perhaps that’s Garland’s spikier point. He’s lionising these journos; the “truth tellers” on the ground. We’re clearly meant to admire Jessie’s noble ideals. But her passion isn’t entirely selfless — there’s a bloodrush that comes with the danger. Jessie literally risks her life to snap the cornered President. So is it worth it? As Civil War‘s credits roll, Jessie’s “money shot” is frozen on screen. We’re left to decide if a single image can ever capture the whole story.
Originally published at https://good.film.
