The trailer for A24‘s Civil War provoked an immediate response. Battle lines were automatically drawn on social media and around the water cooler. Depending on your political philosophy, the President (Nick Offerman) represented either Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Jesse Plemon’s terrifying soldier was either a MAGA insurrectionist or the face of a military that answers only to a dictator. Surely, this film would indict a political party or figure, although the answer depends on who you talk to.
After the trailer ended, however, a common refrain emerged around Civil War. Why would California and Texas be on the same side of any conflict? Thousands of social media users mused how two politically divergent states would merge into a single political entity to take on a president seeking a third term in office. Offerman’s unnamed President, before the film even begins, has disbanded the FBI, called airstrikes on U.S. citizens, and manipulated Congress into altering the Constitution to give him a third term.
At a special screening in Los Angeles last week, writer-director Alex Garland explained his decision to unite California and Texas, saying it was “partly to get around a kind of reflexive, polarizing position that people might fall into.” The writer/director continued, “Our political difference is less important than this.” Even then, many online commenters refused to see any CA/TX alliance as possible. To highlight the bizarre stage we’re at currently, he ended his thoughts with this, “And then the counter to that is if you cannot conceive of that, what you’re saying is that your polarized political position would be more important than a fascist president. Which, when you put it like that, I would suggest, is insane.”
Expecting Civil War to give in to cathartic blood-letting for any particular side was foolish. It’s not the type of project that Alex Garland makes. His most notable films (Ex Machina, Annihilation) are heady and cerebral, asking more from the viewer and are unlikely to offer neat, tidy endings. Civil War intends to cover journalism in this age. Media coverage has never been more closely scrutinized. Regardless of how researched a subject is, it can be dismissed with a hand wave of “fake news.” Garland posits that all journalism is now war coverage. Thanks to the fire and brimstone in every headline. We are constantly at each other’s throats, and the way we interact in public reflects this relatively new mindset.
As a Rorschach test, Civil War succeeds. As a treatise on our specific perils of democracy happening in the U.S., it won’t scratch that itch. No matter which way you lean. People are punishing the film for not being what the marketing promised. A fate that plagues many films but never so rage-inducing as this specific film. Though it’s worth noting, the relatively apolitical nature of Garland’s film doesn’t stop him from asking interesting questions.
The central figure of Civil War is Lee (played with distinct weariness by Kirsten Dunst), a veteran of many war zones and documentarian of the worst atrocities. War journalism is not a new concept to Americans. For the better part of a century, Americans got their news about foreign entanglements from writers stationed elsewhere. But what if you remove that safe distance from conflict? Would those same journalists who covered horrors in Gaza and Ukraine be able to cover the story in their homeland? Could they do so objectively? Walter Cronkite used to pride himself on delivering news to the public and letting them make determinations themselves, but we live in a radically charged political climate. It’s naive to expect someone like Cronkite could still succeed today.
Of the four leads in Civil War, Lee, Joel (Wagner Moura), Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), Lee is the most nihilistic. “Every time I survived a war zone, every time I got the photo, I thought I was sending a warning home. Don’t do this. But here we are.” We, as Americans, seem uniquely gifted at distancing ourselves from violence. Even as a mob stormed through D.C., people went about their day. We label violent realities as foreign and ignore them. Take a scene where Joel interacts with a shopkeeper in the war zone. He asks her if she knows a war is going on, and all she musters is, “We try just to stay out of it.” A bit on the nose (no one would call Garland subtle), though it illustrates the disconnect in American minds. We don’t merge the violence in the news with reality.
When things don’t make sense anymore, naturally, we try to separate.
Perhaps that’s why Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy ground the film in documentary aesthetics. No escapism, just pure visceral horror. Too much flourish and audiences will get swept up in action and disengage with critical thinking. To quote Francois Truffaut from an interview he had with Gene Siskel, “I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don’t think I’ve really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war.” Garland attempts to combat this by disorienting the viewer visually. As Lee and Jessie capture horrific acts on celluloid, Hardy utilizes shallow focus, keeping tight on his subjects while obfuscating the world around them. Ensuring the toll of the violence isn’t lost in onscreen spectacle.
The removal of distance from catastrophic events (thanks to social media) hasn’t made us look at them with more clarity. In fact, we might be more apathetic about war than ever.
When Civil War entered the cultural landscape, it looked like it would give moviegoers the right vs. left showdown that we’ve been building to since 2021. It doesn’t. Much like The Hurt Locker didn’t offer much to say about Iraq but more about the type of people who rush into conflict zones, Civil War largely dissects the primal pull of danger for those who beg others to keep something like this from happening at home. But it feels like we can’t offer a narrative to this specific phenomenon. We’re too close to it.
With their home ravaged by war, Lee and Jessie struggle with keeping their perspective out of their coverage. Jesse, in particular, is captivating as her idolatry of Lee—even her apathy—drives her to take greater risks, losing any sense of fear to capture the next image of barbarity. As desensitized as one can be with images of war, the four journalists can’t set aside the despair of the conflict being in their backyard. They occasionally find the same rush and sense of purpose that they did in other countries but also wrestle with whether impartiality is the best way to cover the conflict exploding across the U.S. The core ensemble is neutral to a fault, and I can’t help but feel that’s intentionally mirroring the film’s choice not to pick sides.
Perhaps I’m giving the filmmakers too much credit. Or perhaps they know what most of us do: a movie isn’t the provocation to make people see things differently. What it can do is put us in journalists’s shoes and see how it can all go wrong. Civil War may not choose sides, but the warning it issues is loud and clear. “Don’t do this.”
Civil War is in theatres now.
Read Rachel West’s Civil War review.
Watch Ethan Dayton’s interview with writer/director Alex Garland.
Comments