Civil War

Directed by: Alex Garland
Distributed by: A24

Written by Anna Harrison

80/100

I am going to say something very brave: I liked “Men,” Alex Garland’s 2022 horror film which got skewered by critics, both professional and armchair. So even when Twitter started dragging his name through the mud once more leading up to his most recent film, “Civil War,” I remained optimistic, and now, I have been proven (as always) to be correct. “Civil War” may not reach the highs of his earlier movies like “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation,” but it marks a new chapter in his career, still full of his trademark dread (or “Dredd,” get it) but swapping science-fiction for the horrors of home, for in “Civil War,” the United States is a house divided.

Much has been made—on Twitter, at least—of the alliances shown in the trailers for “Civil War,” most especially the implausibility of a Texas-California alliance—not just because of geography, but the vastly different political climates (though venture to Orange County and you might change your mind about how far left California actually sits). The marketing for “Civil War” played up the lines in the sand, emphasizing the so-called “Western Forces” of the two biggest states of the contiguous United States and the “Florida Alliance,” including a large swatch of the American South, and yet, despite the marketing and despite the film’s provocative title, director Alex Garland (himself a Brit) seems disinterested in the politicking of it all. The unnamed president, played by Nick Offerman, wears a red tie and has stayed in office for three terms, Charlottesville serves as the frontline, and there are mentions of “Portland Maoists” and an “antifa massacre” which the movie would be better without, but these only serve as set dressing. Garland’s real concern lies with the quartet of journalists trying their best to cover this war: Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), Sonny (William McKinley Henderson), and Joel (Wagner Moura). 

The four are attempting to make their way to DC so they can interview and photograph the president, though, as Lee makes clear, Jessie and Sonny are unwelcome hangers-on, each for different reasons: Sonny because he is too old to risk his life in this way, and Jessie because she’s too young. None of them ever discuss how America buckled under its own weight. Your mileage may vary on how well Garland’s refusal to take sides works, but that’s not his point; “Civil War” is less an interrogation of the American political landscape and more a takedown of our exceptionalism. Rob Hardy’s camera lingers on what remains of iconic Americana vistas such as interstates, now bombed out and littered with decaying cars, or shopping malls, now dotted with war debris. Here, Garland seems to say, rests the greatest country on earth, reduced to shootouts amidst abandoned Christmas decorations. Maybe the guy you’re shooting against is on the opposing team. Maybe he’s on your side. It doesn’t matter, because if someone shoots at you, you shoot back—it’s simple math. War is, after all, hell, though Garland—smartly—ops not for spectacle. 

Instead, Lee, Jessie, Sonny, and Joel spend much of their time driving through the beautiful countryside, though one now scarred with the mundane horrors of war. A body here, a gas station patrolled by armed men who strung up their old high school classmates there. It’s the eeriness of everything being almost normal, until you see the snipers patrolling the rooftops. The gunfights, when they happen, are not valorized or full of heroics, but a total bombardment of the senses, with the rattling of machine guns so loud you want to cover your ears. Where is that classic American do-gooder sensibility when shooting a wounded man? Were we ever so exceptional to begin with if we were so easily reduced to gunning down journalists outside the Oval Office?

To Lee, a renowned photojournalist, these questions hardly matter; it only matters that she gets the shot. She betrays no flicker of emotion when she stops to snap pictures of our ruined home, and reprimands Jessie for wearing her heart on her sleeve. “Would you photograph that moment, if I got shot?” Jessie wonders. The answer is obvious. Lee is the consummate professional, the journalist with no agenda, and though she reminds Jessie that they can’t take sides, her commitment to detaching herself has rendered her dull to the world. She views everything through a camera lens, unable to let herself feel the true horror of war. In a clever bit of editing and sound design, whenever Lee or Jessie (the two photographers) take a picture, the movie freezes for a split-second to show the finished product. No sound, no movement—just the image, in its undiluted form. Amidst the clamor and violence of shootouts and raids, everything stills. 

It’s in these pictures and the moments without dialogue that Garland excels. Much of his dialogue, when it happens, is clunky and obvious, though his game cast manages to sell it (most of the time). Still, they are at their best when silent: Lee, finally breaking down whilst pushing through Pennsylvania Avenue; Jessie, wordless at the horror of a mass grave; Sonny, watching the beautiful embers of a fire float past; and most powerfully, Joel, screaming silently into the void as tank after tank rolls past, all his talk of journalistic integrity vanishing as anger finally catches up to him. 

Do the pictures that Lee and Jessie take make us feel empathy for the horrors of war, as we see the exact moment a rebel gets struck by a bullet? Or, like Lee, do we begin to go numb after seeing so much violence that it’s become commonplace? When Lee hands the metaphorical torch to Jessie, after begrudgingly growing to respect her, it feels less like a triumph and more like a funeral: she is now doomed to Lee’s apathy. So while Garland himself may not “take a side” in his film, the existence of Lee seems to argue that you cannot remain detached and remain completely human. What does that mean for Garland, who has spent much of his life watching through a camera? What does that mean for us viewers, sitting in plush AMC chairs and feeling them vibrate as we watch helicopters fly in front of us on the big screen? Are we implicated?

After watching “Civil War,” the answer might be yes.

“Civil War” Trailer

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