Alex Garland‘s latest film (possibly his final as a director if recent reports are to be believed) is possibly his most anticipated. A dystopian drama showing a USA not just divided,but torn asunder. As you would expect from the subject matter, it’s a brutal and unflinching work. One that seeks to capture just how conflicts are captured, focussing as it does on the men and women who cover such events for the media. If it never stints on the horrors of war, it deliberately holds back on a political stance in a way that’s unusually timid for a filmmaker of Garland’s boldness.
Civil War picks up in a USA torn apart by a monumental rift. How it began is never explained, but California and Texas have both seceded and are taking the fight to the rest of the States as the ‘Western Forces’. The States are run by a third-term president played by Nick Offerman. There are hints of fascism in his manner, but the ideologies at work are vague: California and Texas aren’t really the most obvious bedfellows. As the war hits a critical point, a group of journalists set out across the country to Washington D.C. with the aim of getting an interview with the President. There’s photojournalists Lee (Kirsten Dunst) – so hard-bitten she’s practically desiccated – and young, eager Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), cynical writer Joel (Wagner Moura), and grizzled old newspaper man Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson). Each have their own agendas, but all are intent on being part of history, no matter which may it may spin.
The war, and the film, are viewed from the perspective of the two photojournalists. Lee feels like a less abstract continuation of Dunst’s character Justine in Melancholia. Her eyes betraying a deadening Weltschmerz so bone-deep and ingrained that she barely has any more life than the corpses the group pass swinging from a freeway bridge. She’s practically an automaton. Lee is contrasted with the young, excitable Jessie. Spaeny plays her as someone convinced of the value of her work, but not necessarily ready for the reality of it. Her first taste of the violence hits her hard, but gradually the pair begin to merge and switch roles in a Persona-like way. It’s effective character work from both, but feels like a slightly trite narrative choice given how committed the movie is otherwise at presenting a tangible reality.
Civil War will be massively divisive, to the surprise of no one who has followed Garland’s filmmaking career. And it is frustrating just how squeamish he seems to be about engaging with the political aspect, as if that can somehow be avoided in a film about the plausible outcome of an increasingly divided nation. Perhaps Garland’s intention is that the entire audience can imprint their own politics on to the film. Or perhaps it is about the media. Here, they’re protagonists, but not necessarily heroes. The retention of humanity is a major theme, but it’s not clear why that requires the suspension of any political stance.
Were the film undoubtedly succeeds is in its depiction of senselessness and randomness violence The horror of guerrilla warfare transported to the US will be shocking to American audience, but might even hit just as hard for middle-aged Brits who can remember all too well the times the Troubles exploded on British streets. The cultural iconography is different – JC Penney’s and endless two-lane blacktop – but when a psychotic soldier played by Jesse Plemons asks the group at gunpoint, ‘What kind of American are you?’ it’s not a million miles from, ‘Are you a Protestant or a Catholic?’ There’s always a wrong answer.
Frequently gripping and harrowing, and staged with an unsentimental clarity and focus, Civil War ultimately feels a little compromise. By attempting to impart a Swiss-level neutrality it rather leaves itself open to an accusation of a certain moral cowardice. Still, there’s nothing restrained about the immersive action sequences, and watching the bullets and bombs fly around the Lincoln Memorial is certainly a striking sight. But like its central character, there does seem to be something hollow at its core.
In cinemas from Fri 12 Apr 2024