REVIEW: ‘Civil War’ is an eerily plausible vision of the future
Kirsten Dunst stars in Civil War, written and directed by Alex Garland.
Social media is, naturally, a lot of talk. News will hit about something bad happening in the United States, something that reflects the deep social and political divisions in the country, and posts on social media will start to summon the spectre of a new civil war. I’m not really qualified to know the chances of that actually taking place. But what if it did? Alex Garland, who has built his career around eerie works of sci-fi based in near-future settings, has written and directed an imagined future where a civil war finally brings an end to the American empire.
As the action of the film picks up, huge amounts of destruction and loss of life have already happened. The union is divided into multiple factions, like the Western Forces (Texas and California), the Florida Alliance, and the remnants of the original country. The president (played by Nick Offerman in a small but effective role) is shown to be losing the war, and maybe rightfully so. He’s described as enacting frighteningly familiar policies like violence against protestors, and for authorizing airstrikes against civilians. He’s inspired his forces to be completely hostile to the press, and to shoot reporters on sight.
Garland wants us to look at these events from the perspective of several beleaguered journalists, and to consider how their ethics might change when they’re no longer covering a war in some exotic, faraway place. Is there a stronger desire to intervene, or to give up, when you’re watching your own home burn? What responsibility is there to train the next generation of observers when your job is often spurned by the public and ineffective at preventing a catastrophe?
These are potentially fascinating questions, but even so, Civil War is a tricky one to recommend. On balance, it feels like an essential watch, but it’s definitely not the thrill ride or action-adventure that some of the buzz out of the South by Southwest festival suggested. In fact, it’s more of a harrowing, almost horror-like experience. General audiences might feel depressed to see such a frightening vision play out, so it may be the kind of thing that only news and politics junkies should consider. Being one of those people, I certainly had a lot of feelings when I left the theatre, and I expected others would, too - then I checked out what people were saying on Letterboxd.
Wagner Moura as Joel, a hotshot reporter whose coping mechanisms begin to fail.
Based on my own gut reaction to the movie, I expected a number of others on the platform to rate it fairly highly. Nevertheless, the reaction I saw on Letterboxd was incredibly mixed, and it was one of the bigger surprises I’ve had about a movie in a while. Many members found the film to be too apolitical, too unwilling to choose a side or incorporate a stronger condemnation of the events in the story. Others found the drama far too heavy-handed, without enough nuance to become the sophisticated take on the subject matter that they hoped for.
Maybe the real problem is one of distance or time. As a Canadian, I live close enough to the United States that I feel somewhat invested in what happens there, given how similar our cultures are. But I also don’t feel the sort of dread that would come with something like this happening in my backyard. I’m able to dissociate and view a theoretical conflict from a remove. Maybe that’s why American reactions to Civil War are as polarized as the events in the movie itself. Confronted with something so visceral, it’s understandable to feel like the depiction wasn’t quite right, or that the movie owes us something that it can’t provide (at least not in the hands of an English writer-director). Perhaps it’s like when an E.R. doctor can’t watch a medical drama, because they know too much. I’m also very curious to know if the U.S. reception to this changes at all in 5 to 10 years.
What did I see in Civil War? I saw a core of impressive performances from the cast, led by Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a bedraggled conflict photojournalist, and Wagner Moura as Joel, a cavalier reporter with a mission to interview Offerman’s authoritarian president. Carpooling with these two to Washington, D.C. is the veteran writer Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and the newbie photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Each of the four have different ways of coping with the carnage they’re seeing, but by the time they reach their destination, these mechanisms fall apart.
Jesse Plemons as an unnamed soldier that the main characters encounter near D.C.
Lurking around every corner on the characters’ journey are people trying to kill them, people who were once on their “side”. This comes to a head in one of the film’s best (and most terrifying) scenes, when a soldier played by Jesse Plemons interrogates the characters’ allegiances with one of his most chilling and stoic turns as a villain. Watching this film at the same time that Amazon’s Fallout adaptation came out made Civil War almost feel like a prequel, given how unpredictable Garland’s wartime America has become. If you do end up seeing Civil War in theatres, I strongly suggest seeking out an IMAX screening, where the sound mixing helps you feel every gunshot, almost to an unpleasant degree.
What about Garland’s take on the role that journalists play in conflicts? Unlike those who argue that the characters’ deliberate compartmentalization, their placement of themselves at a remove, somehow spoils the film, I think it gives us a way to comprehend what we’re seeing. As expert observers, they already know all the issues that led to the war, and don’t waste time laying them out for us. Lee admits that she doesn’t know if anything she captures with her camera will have an impact, words that may have some connection to Garland’s own feelings. Meanwhile, Joel stands for the people who scream “Bring it on!” during times like this, welcoming the rush from living through history, all while bottling up his fear and rage. Yet they both feel driven to bear witness, no matter how self-destructive it is. All the while, they guide Jessie along, unsure if it’s wise to have her follow their example.
It’s a paradoxical state of being, which might read as apathy to some. I read it more as a survival technique - these characters know they’re useless in a physical fight, and when held at gunpoint, all they have is their way with words, or their skill with a camera. It won’t win the war, and it won’t prevent another one, but it will create a record for when all the chaos is over. And maybe that’s the best you can do.
Civil War gets three and a half stars out of four.
Stray thoughts
As a Canadian, I appreciated the little detail about how our currency would become so valuable in the aftermath of a conflict like this.
The violence in the film is unsparing and might grind you down more than you’d think.
Offerman showed lots of restraint in his performance - it must have been tempting to overplay it as Meryl Streep did in Don’t Look Up.