Allow me to attempt to convince you of something you are almost certainly not going to believe: Civil War, the incendiary new film by Alex Garland, is not a work of political commentary– at least, not in the way you think it is. And that’s a good thing.
If Garland were attempting to make the direct political statement he appears to be making, one would imagine he would spend more time on the politics. Though we can certainly infer the nature of the dispute which has turned the contiguous 48 into a battleground, we never learn the specifics; there are vague references to the “Western Front” and “Florida secessionists,” but even when we witness actual warfare it’s never clear who the good guys and bad guys are supposed to be. We don’t know much about the policies of Nick Offerman’s blustery president, beyond the fact that the only thing America agrees on is that he’s terrible and has to go (Civil War is also not a work of science fiction). For all of its hype as a Movie of the Moment, the actual political strife is primarily a background to the real story. Civil War is, first and foremost, a film about the art and importance of journalism and photography, and a pretty damn good one at that.
Our hero is not a combatant or a freedom fighter, but an award-winning photojournalist: Lee Smith, played with earned grit by Kirsten Dunst. Lee’s team consists of her professional partner, a hard-nosed journalist played with effective cynicism by Wagner Moura, as well as an elder statesman of “what’s left of the New York Times” who comes along for the ride (A24 utility player Stephen McKinley Henderson, one of our very best currently working That Guy actors). Their mission: to make the pilgrimage from New York to Washington for a shot at what could be the final interview with the president before he is deposed and/or executed, despite warnings from colleagues that “they shoot journalists on sight there.”
The story roughly follows the dreamy, episodic format of Apocalypse Now, our team finding themselves dropped into a series of increasingly haunting vignettes on their journey into the heart of darkness: a sniper exchanging shots with a pair of soldiers from within a heavily fortified “Santa’s Workshop” theme park; a non-partisan “Twilight Zone” of a town which insists on carrying on business as usual at any cost; a truly terrifying encounter with a pair of shady militiamen (one of whom is played by Jesse Plemmons, Dunst’s husband and absolutely the guy you call when you need a dead-eyed all-American psychopath). All of these scenes, of course, are exaggerations of those we’ve grown accustomed to on the news; their discomfit lies in their plausibility, amplified by a backdrop of deadmalls and abandoned big box stores. Subtract the corpses littering the parking lots, and these settings are indistinguishable from any number of suburban wastelands across the country.
But, again, Civil War is not a war movie; it’s a journalism movie set during wartime. The film’s primary arc has little to do with the turning tides of a battle between the states, and everything to do with Jessie, the fresh-faced rookie played by Cailee Spaeny, finding her voice as an aspiring photojournalist. Jessie idolizes Lee, and though the older woman is initially cold to the (admittedly wildly irresponsible) idea of letting an untested 23-year-old tag along on what is plainly a suicide mission, she takes her under her wing and shows her the ropes. The scenes between the two are touching, and not just because of the metatextual joy of watching one Sofia Coppola heroine pass the torch to another. Throughout the film, scenes are punctuated with their snapshots– Lee’s on crisp digital, Jessie’s on black and white film– and we get to learn their respective sensibilities. It’s a strange environment to hone one’s craft, but art is often honed in turmoil.
The premise and marketing for Civil War make it look like a particularly cynical example of Walking Dead-style prepper-horror, a subgenre to which my aversion is a matter of public record. Thankfully, the film’s actual modus operandi is closer to something like Zodiac, placing us within the viewpoint of its crusading reporters as they attempt to forge a narrative out of absolute chaos. In doing so, Garland fashions a film which plays out as something closer to a nonfiction novel than a work of speculative fiction. By framing the story through the subjective lenses of his characters, we gain an intuitive understanding of their world. We don’t need to understand all the political ins and outs of the conflict, just as we don’t always have a full understanding of those playing out in real life. The reporters’ job is to communicate just how crazy shit is.
None of this changes, of course, the fact that Civil War will almost certainly rank among the most divisive films of the year. This is a Discourse Movie, a film to which many audience members will walk in with a preconceived notion of what it is and what it should be; one suspects a good deal of hot takes will be locked and loaded before they so much as get out of the popcorn line. Even approached with an open mind, there is a little bit of tonal wonkiness; the graphic violence can serve as a distraction from the film’s ultimate goals, and occasionally comes off as somewhat tasteless– particularly in light of the film’s final moments, when the proceedings suddenly lurch into (admittedly very funny) black comedy. But once you recalibrate your expectations from what the film appears to be to what it actually is, the film pulls into surprising focus.
So why bother with that incendiary premise at all if it’s not what the movie’s actually about? Consider the alternatives. If this story were set in Gaza or Ukraine or any of the active war zones which don’t pull big enough ratings for you to have heard of, it would have to be about those places; to have it be about our cast of characters looking for shots or quotes would seem trivial. Conversely, one could cook up a fictional conflict with unspecified foreign combatants, but that would be dramatically flimsy– fine for a feature-length male enhancement ad like Top Gun: Maverick, but not for a film that’s actually trying to say something. A new American civil war is the only option for this story, because, as far as journalism goes, those are the front lines. In a very real way, writers and photographers are among the last lines of defense against this sort of insanity. Pray they don’t fall to AI and SEO before we really need them.
Civil War
2024
dir. Alex Garland
109 min.
Opens Friday, 4/12 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre, Somerville Theatre, and theaters everywhere
