Civil War

Civil War

Writer & Director ~ Alex Garland

2023, USA-UK

Stars ~ Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny

 

 

In a near-future USA, journalists in a civil war want to have words with the president.

 

Initially, not superficially choosing a side seems commendable. Garland even unites states that make American commentators say “Really? How? Why?” (Texas and California); but this is surely just in the service of muddying the waters. For example, an “ANTIFA massacre” is mentioned, but is it of or by? Although superficially meticulously vague, intent is obvious from the start when the presidential character stumbles around a speech along the lines of “Some says it’s the best triumph of humankind”; and the finale underscores this. A civil war has been brought about by such a character and the people are left in a warzone, swaggering guns and cameras without knowing really who they’re shooting.

 

Who exactly is the end target? The warmongers compromising journalists’ humanity? Audiences not paying attention to horrific reportage as a warning? If there’s the message that we don’t heed journalism as a warning, the film seems a little old-fashioned as the real-world scrutiny has surely now widened to the responsibility journalism has for entertaining “Alternative Facts” and platforming those that promote scams, conspiracies, division, and hatred. Social Media is suspicious by its absence of omnipresence. These are the very things that have put this presidential figure where he is and brought about this civil war, surely?  

 

 

In the end, this conjuring trick of negligible fence-sitting means we are left with the human drama: it’s about the characters and their experience of war. This mostly consists of driving through war-torn suburbs in the kind of tableaus familiar to post-apocalypse genre. We know straight away that Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) is there to take on Lee’s (Kirsten Dunst) mantle. As soon as Lee saves Cailee during the opening action, you can tell Lee is going to be one of those stubborn, headstrong, careless, and slightly clueless youngsters that is going to get others killed. And when other side characters suddenly turn up, they may as well wave placards saying “Expendables”, especially as we know from the trailer that we have the scene-stealing Jesse Plemons moment coming up. As haunted and convincing as Dunst is, as much as Wagner Moura emotes as he falls to his knees and cries/screams in grief as soldiers pass by, there isn’t much new or insightful here with Spaeny especially coming across as mere device.

 

What we do get is a run of impressive set-pieces and sound-design, and direction that is equally mainstream generic as it is engrossing. It’s bigger and grander but somehow less distinctive than Garland’s previous films. In their interview with Simon Mayo,Garland and Kunst nod that the film is a warning about the rise of fascism, and Mayo subsequently commented on the show that it wouldn’t work so well at any other time. It certainly feels of-the-moment and away from that, in the future, what will remain is a film that is less than the sum of its parts. But if we’re meant to reflect on our responsibility to images of war, this still ends on a mainstream Blow It Up! finale which is exciting, fully explosive, and immersive and makes the journey worthwhile, but nevertheless undermines any previous thematic pensiveness.