A24
Lee Smith, a hardened war photographer, is slogging through the toughest assignment of her life. She and a trio of other New York journalists are crossing behind enemy lines—in their own country, for a change—in pursuit of the ultimate scoop, an interview with the president before D.C. falls to the rebels of the Western Forces. “Every time I survived a war zone and got the photo,” she tells her colleagues at one point, “I thought I was sending a warning home: Don’t do this. But here we are.”
In the prescient and frightening Civil War, those enemy lines are very hard to find: Writer-director Alex Garland shows exactly how fragmented such a conflict would be in this country. Our ideologies do not split neatly at the Mason-Dixon, as they did during our last brawl. We may have blue and red states, nominally, but America’s left and right camps alternate in concentric circles radiating out from our cities; any civil war here would make the Balkan conflict of the 1990s look like a doubles tennis match on a grass court.
“War is hell” has been the central message of countless films—the medium is ideally suited to communicate the chaos and tragedy of conflict. Garland’s main gloss on the topic is more like a question. American filmgoers are mostly oblivious to the actual horrors we invoke in our daily displays of righteousness on social media. You want a civil war? Garland seems to be asking. Here you go.
The director specializes in near-future dystopias: He wrote the screenplay for Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (for my money, the best zombie apocalypse film, with its unnervingly fast monsters). The stylishly frightening Ex Machina (which he wrote and directed in 2014), starred Alicia Vikander as a budding and beautiful humanoid robot. Playing on our well-founded anxiety about AI, it’s one of the finer sci-fi films of the century so far. Civil War draws a bit from both genres: As in Ex Machina, this future-trip is woven from assorted threads of our contemporary anxiety, and the resulting American hellscape teems with marauders who might as well be undead.
An improvised explosive device brings a food riot in New York City to a bloody end. A country gas station becomes a torture chamber where old foes gruesomely settle petty grudges. Dispossessed suburban families camp out in an old football field. One town chooses a cloistered oblivion away from the news under the watchful eye of rooftop gunmen. A rural roadside becomes a killing field for a crazed sniper who’s on…which side? Lee and her tripmates witness it all, their cameras devouring every injustice and brutality, but they’re never totally certain about who is killing whom or why.
Much of the audience is likewise confused. In the media commentary about the film—and on top of the usual reviews there has been a lot of commentary in the Times, the Guardian, Slate, Vox, etc., it being a movie about journalists—reveals one of two things: Either Garland’s screenplay left out some crucial exposition, or the average op-ed writer is a terrible filmgoer. Maybe we all are: When I saw it with a bunch of guys last week, we were all the way at the climax of the film, with guns blazing outside the White House, when one friend loudly asked, “Wait—who are they shooting at…?”
In fact, Garland lays out the facts very clearly. Civil War pulls explicitly from our current pickle: His president starts the film with bluster and lies modeled obviously on Donald Trump’s rants: “Some are saying it’s the greatest triumph in military history…” Soon we learn that he’s defied the Constitution and is in his third term in office, something Trump himself has said he wants to do. His government is shooting journalists on sight—again, something Trump has fantasized about. And the most ardent of his followers, here embodied chillingly by the marvelous Jesse Plemons and a small band of militiamen, have a very clear idea of what the right kind of American is—White—not unlike the Donald’s biggest fans.
The director could have made his analog to Trump and MAGA even more overt, but that would have undermined the film in crucial ways. Every thoughtful American knows our political context: In the election of 2020, an authoritarian, racist political movement launched an insurrection against our government. We are in a civil war already.
Garland’s screenplay admittedly throws one real curveball—the main rebels are led by the Western Forces, an unlikely seeming partnership between Texas and California—and that is really befuddling people. It’s a bit of misdirection, to be sure; the real-life Texas of today would not likely revolt to depose a conservative like Trump.
But it is not, as many critics have howled, a monumental copout. As a thought experiment about our current conflict, it’s perfect. In our multitudinous democracy of competing majorities and minorities, actors on either side of the political spectrum have reason to fear an authoritarian regime in D.C. And yes, one can imagine a day when evangelical Christians might wake up to the callous avarice of their Bible salesman. One can even imagine Texas (which, remember, is a majority-minority state) throwing its lot in with the godless, multiethnic liberals of California to take him down. It’s in the interests of liberals and conservatives to preserve our constitutional democracy.
If the movie falters, it’s in the up-close-and-personal part of the story. As Lee, Kirsten Dunst gives a terrifically grim performance, one of the best in her career, but the woman remains a bit of a cliché despite her best efforts. Likewise for the magnetic Wagner Moura, playing her oversexed and gung-ho sidekick Joel, who seems to take too much delight in the horrors he’s reporting; and for Caillee Spaeny as Jessie, the naïve but hungry young photographer who talks her way into joining them; and for Stephen McKinley Henderson, the crew’s aging and august father figure. They’re gonna get the story, by gum!—and they’ll pause along the way at every trite stop in the hero’s journey and coming of age narrative training courses. When the turn comes—not the war’s turn, but the foursome’s—we’re understandably underwhelmed by the betrayal.
No matter. They all act the hell out of it. And the production of the film, said to be the most expensive yet from the edgy hit-maker A24, is terrific. Garland and cinematographer Rob Hardy, his frequent collaborator, choose all the best angles to heighten the tension and keep us off center. Most of the action unfolds in tense confrontations between the journalists and small groups of strangers. These scenes are shot in unbearably close quarters. Periodic wide views—of New York City plunged into chaos, the rebel troops massing in Virginia, the nighttime assault on a blazing D.C.—provide the broader horror the story requires. Yet amid all the chaos, the filmmakers and actors find moments to linger. I found one odd recurring motif especially moving: The camera, even in scenes of skyrocketing tension, pauses to zoom in up close on the trees or grass. Yes, war is hell, but the world will go on with or without us.
Despite its formulaic failings, this is an excellent film. You may even think it hits too close to home. Good.