Civil War

Civil War

Alex Garland is one of Britain’s finest auteur writers and directors. His films centre on dystopian themes such as the collapse of society (28 Days Later) cloning (Never Let me Go) and A.I. (Ex Machina) and are always never less than interesting and thought provoking. A mixture of Christopher Nolan meets Charlie Brooker if you like.

In his new film ‘Civil War’, Garland imagines an America that is riven from within and torn apart by civil war between a fascist government led by a three term President (Nick Offerman), ranged against a military alliance between California and Texas called the Western Forces (WF). Given the current political situation in America that began with Trump’s surreal Presidential Election win in 2016, and with the psychodrama continuing with this year’s Presidential Election between the same incumbents (Trump and Biden), Garland has written what is sure to be one of cinema’s greatest lines when Jesse Plemons, a non descript government soldier asks Wagner Moura, a journalist ‘OK, but what kind of American are you?’ whilst nonchalantly scratching the 3 day stubble on his face. Menace and danger screams out from Plemons acting masterclass and given the fault lines in American politics, the line is profound and sums up perfectly the zeitgeist and conundrum that is America today.

The film is fashioned along the same lines as ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’, ‘Under Fire’ and ‘Salvador’ where the narrative focus is on the objective power of journalism to record and tell the truth amidst political and social upheaval, but unlike those films, ‘Civil War’ doesn’t take a stand much less make a comment about the political situation in America. This was a conscious decision by Alex Garland because I presume that he did not want to alienate his American audience, or to inflame an already tense political situation, or to come over as another foreign ‘holier than thou’ talking head and critic.

This was a mistake because the film is much poorer for it and I think Garland has ‘bottled it’. Trump and his supporters are fascists and given his attempted insurrection on the Capitol in January 2020, American democracy is under attack from within, and it therefore behoves an influential art form like film to say aloud what is at stake. It has always ever been thus from a slew of films from ‘Mr Smith Goes to Washington’ to ‘All the President’s Men’ to any number of films about the black civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Cinema should entertain but also reflect the times in which it exists.

Despite this, Garland has created a film that is a masterful example of nail biting tension and this is due in no small part to the superb sound editing where the (loud) crack of gun shots will have you jumping more than once in your seat. You anticipate what is going to happen but jump nevertheless.

The story focuses on a celebrated and hard bitten photographer called Lee (Kirsten Dunst), who goes on a road trip with two other colleagues and a wannabe photographer (Cailee Spaeny) across WF territory to Washington DC for an interview with the President. Along the dangerous journey, Lee takes a series of photographic montages à la Robert Capa, Lee Miller and Don McCullin to record the civil war, which is never explained. It just is, but despite Garland’s strenuous efforts to be as apolitical as possible, I suspect that the film will be viagra to Trump’s middle America, gun toting, conspiracy theory supporting Right wing supporters. In fact, I would go as far to say that for some, ‘Civil War’ will represent a clarion call to arms and perhaps embolden them to action when in their fevered minds, fact and fiction, reality and fantasy becomes dangerously mixed up. For this reason, Garland should have taken a stand and a side. Go see and decide for yourself.