Civil War Dispassionately Reports On The Last Days of America: Review
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The post Civil War Dispassionately Reports On The Last Days of America: Review appeared first on Consequence.
The Pitch: In a nonspecific dystopian future, Alex Garland’s Civil War presumes a kind of societal breakdown that, on its face, seems silly: A tripartite secession from the United States on the part of the “Western Forces of Texas and California” and the “Florida Alliance,” among others. The President (Nick Offerman) offers hollow words of assurance that victory is coming soon; but looking at the empty cities and the armed skirmishes between varying tribes of uniformed soldiers within, it’s not looking good for the stars and stripes.
Caught in the middle, silently recording it all, is a small band of journalists — legendary war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst), Reuters reporter Joel (Narcos’ Wagner Moura), wise New York Times veteran Sammy (Steven McKinley Henderson), and fresh-faced amateur photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Together, they rush from New York City to Washington, D.C., for a last-ditch shot at interviewing the President as enemy forces advance toward the capital.
What Kind of American Are You? Love him or hate him, Alex Garland steadfastly refuses to give audiences what they might be expecting. When it works, it works; take his laudable takes on artificial intelligence (Ex Machina) or the ontological implications of AI (Devs). But sometimes Garland’s metaphors get away with him, like the reductive and muddy misogyny metaphors of Men. With Civil War, his latest, Garland may well have found his ideal thematic middle ground: contrary to what initial trailers might imply, his haunting dystopia is less focused on the why of America’s impending doom and more on the day-to-day how of what it would look like.
Indeed, you won’t get a shred of specificity into the logistics of the country’s trifurcated nature in Civil War’s sparse script. Little of the leadup to this violent revolution makes sense, and deliberately so; don’t expect the politics of the varying factions to line up to the expected blue-versus-red dynamics of a post-Trump, post-January-6th political landscape. What little we get of that comes from Sammy’s allusions to Offerman’s President being a dictator in his third term or a small but terrifying cameo from Jesse Plemons as a nationalistic militiaman who seems to be using the war to play out his own personal psychopath fantasies.
While some may decry that as political cowardice (why shy away from the real-life politics of what feels like our own impending civil war, after all?), it feels elementary to Garland’s pet interests. A British filmmaker, after all, Garland treats America the way many American films relate to distant wars in the Middle East — the factional dynamics are mere window dressing for the overall chaos of war, with war journalists bravely setting aside their personal safety to tell the story of what happened. “We report so they can ask,” Lee tells Jesse at one point; that may as well be Garland’s ethos as well.
A Private War: Indeed, Garland is far more interested in the ethics and personal bravery of wartime journalists, as filtered through our intriguing ensemble of leads. Dunst’s Lee is a battle-hardened, cynical photographer in the vein of her namesake, Lee Miller, or perhaps Marie Colvin (shades of the 2018 Rosamund Pike film A Private War abound); she’s seen it all and knows how to survive, and seems to compartmentalize the very haunting fact that the bloodshed she’s captured for years elsewhere is happening right in her own backyard.
Civil War (A24)
She and Jessie form a kind of mentor-mentee bond, Lee doing her best to arm the younger photographer for the sights that await her. Meanwhile, Jessie’s also attracted to Joel’s devil-may-care glee, an adrenaline junkie chasing the high of danger until it hits too close to home. This three-part dynamic (with Henderson as the wise grandpa in this doomed family of journos) plays out in haunting and disquieting ways, particularly by the film’s end.
Garland clearly respects the concept of journalistic objectivity, the casual nobility of setting aside one’s own politics to capture even the ugliest moments of history. As the group’s erstwhile road trip grows ever more dangerous, each new vignette revealing another horrid slice of humanity, we see its effect on even the most detached observers.
Similarly, Civil War’s presentation treats its violent events with similar verite immediacy, cinematographer Rob Hardy embedding us in one firefight or riot after another with handheld camerawork that places you deep in the belly of the beast. Bullets whiz by, and .50 cal machine guns burp with deafening reports; it’s certainly a visual feast, albeit a haunting one, one befitting the immersive IMAX presentation A24 is going for here. A paradoxically bubbly soundtrack evokes the wartime contrasts of Apocalypse Now and Full Metal Jacket, transplanting the tropes and conventions of other dastardly war pictures to our own backyard.
Civil War (A24)
The Verdict: Civil War is sure to be a divisive picture, and it already is; perhaps in a less politically fraught moment, it would be greeted more on its own level, a speculative ode to the integrity of war journalism transplanted to the haunting immediacy of our American backyard. (Lord knows sourcing footage from the likes of Andy Ngo is hardly a good look.)
As is, the notion of the United States collapsing into third-world infighting feels very real for a lot of people — Garland boldly asks us to take a step back, to forget about notions of who is right and who is wrong and simply focus on the horrors of what might happen if this happened at all. If you surrender to its abstractions, it proves a disquieting, terrifying watch.
Where’s It Playing? Civil War is currently raging in theaters.
Trailer:
Civil War Dispassionately Reports On The Last Days of America: Review
Clint Worthington
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