I can’t help but admire Alex Garland for the feature of his fourth film, Civil War, that bugs me the most. Set in a near but indeterminate future, the British writer and director turns his gaze on America, examining a horrific yet (post-January 6, 2021) not implausible consequence of partisan politics driving civilians to the brink of destruction. A Second American Civil War is the subject of Garland’s film, with the United States fracturing into multiple parties, such as the Florida Alliance and the Western Forces, the latter joining Texas and California (states with generally opposing political ideologies but mighty economical power) and who, where Garland drops us into the story, are in the final stages of an assault on Washington, D.C.
Civil War, however, isn’t interested in the political leanings of these groups, or even what instigated the war to begin with. There are allusions to things, sure; a quick mention that the President (played by Nick Offerman) is currently serving his third term in office implies that the presidency has turned into something of a dictatorship. It’s frustrating, as the charged nature of the premise— and the charged offscreen nature of America, with a repeat of 2020’s fraught election poised to occur later this year— begs for Garland to take a side, to take a stand, to take some kind of angle— to say something, anything. The lack of discussion around race is especially nagging, as white America’s treatment of minorities is the through-line that runs through the country’s history; slavery of Black Americans was the central cause of the American Civil War, the beginning of which was 163 years to the day of Civil War’s release in theaters. It isn’t even that there’s an absence of diversity among the film’s cast, and its most tense and upsetting scene involves a chilling Jesse Plemons as an unnamed soldier demanding to know where everyone he is conversing with hails from to determine “what kind of American” they are. It’s that what gestures toward meaningful commentary in the film is as light as a feather. The more I ponder Civil War, the more its hollow core— already evident as I was first watching it unfold— reveals itself.
But the fact that Civil War doesn’t even attempt to get bogged down in the who, what, when, where, and why of the war is also sort of a great swing that invites the audience to both project their own beliefs onto what they see onscreen, and completely divert the focus to the human, rather than the political, subjects of war. Garland accomplishes this through his core cast of leads, a group of journalists traveling south from New York to cover what looks to be the final stages of the war. Kirsten Dunst has arguably never been better than she is as Lee Smith, a famous war photographer whose experiences have hardened her; Dunst wears her detachment on her battered, weary face. Wagner Moura is beguiling as her journalist colleague Joel, and Stephen McKinley Henderson’s Sammy, an older journalist and one of the pair’s mentors, balances out their volatility with his soft-spoken but firm wisdom and experience. Much of that volatility stems from the inclusion of Jesse (Cailee Spaeny), a young, aspiring photojournalist who counts Lee among her heroes— and who Joel invites to join them on their road trip without telling Lee first. Loss of innocence is a common theme across many war movies, especially those centering around young people, and Spaeny impressively and believably takes us through Jesse’s psychological journey from hesitant and terrified to fearless and desensitized.
In fact, it’s the up and down relationship between Lee and Jesse that is Civil War’s most riveting aspect. As members of the press, the characters are able to travel through war zones as a neutral party, and throughout much of the film, we watch Lee plunge into danger, dodging intense scenes of death and destruction without batting an eye. When Jesse asks Lee if she got shot, would she photograph the moment, Lee cooly responds, “What do you think?” It’s at this point that I should mention that Civil War is an immensely disturbing film, more so than even Garland’s previous works, with gruesome scenes of death and destruction— sometimes rendered in the most depraved manner imaginable— cropping up in commonplace settings. As Jesse changes throughout their journey, Lee experiences from the outside her own desensitization to such sights, and her own humanity begins to reawaken. Garland further distinguishes the two women on their parallel journeys through their photography methods, cutting many of his action scenes from movement to freeze frames of the photographs they’ve just captured. Jesse shoots on black-and-white film, old school; it’s tactile and irreversible. Lee shoots in color (another indicator of her reawakening), digitally; she can delete her photos— and the memories associated with them— from existence before anyone else ever sees them, and in one telling moment, she does. But just what exactly Garland is trying to say about the way we process images, if anything, is a detail I’m still trying to wrap my head around. War and media, in many respects, go hand-in-hand, and for the majority of civilians, our perception of war (and only firsthand experience of it) is shaped by the images captured on film, both in reality and fiction. Photography in Civil War is a device that reveals facets of its characters, but much as with the film as a whole, that voyeuristic lens that is typically so ripe for cinematic exploration lacks so much perspective.
But the cast is so transcendent and Garland’s filmmaking so propulsive, they balance out Civil War’s faultier aspects. Garland effectively mines for fear and tension in the kinds of places we frequent in our daily lives: a gas station, stalked by some shift gun-toting men who perhaps have something to hide. A quaint small town main street, seemingly left untouched by the war— but gunmen watch over from the rooftops all the same. A roadside holiday display transformed into a war zone, the tinkling Christmas music continuing to play over the occasional sounds of gunfire. His camera plunges the audience right into the heart of action scenes that thrum with the rhythmic pulse of explosions, pausing only occasionally to briefly linger on those aforementioned freeze frame shots that capture the hellscape for posterity. Garland’s work has always concerned examining humanity through the lens of science fiction and disturbing imagery (humans vs. A.I. in Ex-Machina, grappling with grief and guilt as seen through the female leads of Annihilation and Men), and these war scenes that hew so close to reality in Civil War are among the most terrifying in his filmography, right up to its cynical finale, played with a pitch black sense of humor. Still, I’m most surprised at my own reaction, and how straight down the middle I landed on this movie. For all that it’s about, perhaps the most shocking aspect of Civil War is actually how completely un-polarizing it is.
Civil War is now playing in theaters. Runtime: 109 minutes. Rated R.
Katie at the Movies 