Much ado has been made about a bit of promo for Alex Garland’s near-future dystopian film Civil War. A map showing the combatants in a new American civil war features the “Western Forces” — an alliance between Texas and California, which have united to battle the federal government and its despotic third-term president.
Needless to say, that doesn’t make a lick of sense given our current moment. Perhaps no two states are more diametrically opposed, politically and culturally speaking, than our nation’s two most populous states, and an alliance between the two seems almost comical. But I didn’t necessarily have a problem with that. I don’t think a film about political division and the horrors of war needs to be rooted in the exact realities of our current moment in order to be meaningful. In fact, a film about a civil war between, say, Trump loyalists and legions of anti-fascists seems almost lazy (though the film does indeed use protest footage shot by far-right commentator Andy Ngo). Garland — the British writer-director known for such impressive sci-fi efforts as Ex Machina and Annihilation — is surely more creative than that, right? Surely he’ll manage to say something interesting and impactful about modern life … right?
As it turns out, Civil War doesn’t say much of anything at all.
Garland drops us in medias res to the thick of ongoing chaos. The American dollar is worth virtually nothing. Interstates are blocked up with abandoned vehicles, cellphone service and gasoline are hard to come by, and corpses litter the landscape. Lee (Kirsten Dunst), Joel (Wagner Moura), Jamie (Cailee Spaeny) and Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) are a foursome of journalists headed south from war-torn New York City to Washington, D.C. As the Western Forces close in on the White House, renowned photographer Lee and reporter Joel (they’re with Reuters) hope to land one last interview with the president (Nick Offerman at his most polished and clean-shaven) before the federal government falls. Sammy (with “what’s left of” The New York Times) and Jamie (a budding young photog who idolizes Lee) tag along.
The plot presents no shortage of logistical questions. How and why are these members of the press — one of whom is seemingly affiliated with no official outlet — granted such unfettered, unmitigated access to the Western Forces’ military operations, and why do no war criminals herein particularly mind being documented, faces exposed, while doing war crimes? How is there such a robust press corps when the nation’s infrastructure is so obliterated? Why do so few of the military maneuvers we witness have any apparent tactical goal? What’s with that nonsensical and tonally bizarre bit of mid-film vehicular horseplay that predictably leads to a bad situation?
Garland is a very skilled filmmaker, and so of course Civil War isn’t without its strengths. All four leads’ performances — particularly Dunst’s — are unsurprisingly elite, as is a chilling if tonally jarring cameo from Dunst’s real-life husband Jesse Plemons as a racist war criminal. The soundtrack is peppered with bangers from Sturgill Simpson, De La Soul, Suicide and Silver Apples, and the action sequences are expertly filmed. (The closing sequence, a 20-minute barrage of gunfire and explosions, inspired a “fucking epic!” from someone seated near me in an early screening, so your mileage may vary as far as whether you think the violence is earned.)
During Civil War’s second act, our core characters visit a quaint small-town boutique where the clerk makes a point of saying her community is staying out of the conflict. It feels, for a moment, as if Garland is asking his audience, “How could you be surrounded by such political chaos and remain ambivalent?” But I’d argue that’s more or less what Garland has done in making a film about American division that says nothing about actual American division. Aside from one oblique reference to an event known as “The Antifa Massacre,” as The Washington Post’s Amy Nicholson puts it, the film appeals to a broad base by “dodging specifics.”
Here and now, in real-world America, marginalized communities deal with crises every day. The press tracks troubling moments while under threat of suppression with startling frequency. As “fucking epic” as Civil War looks, is it here to serve as a warning or simply a bit of fantasy? I’m not sure Garland has an answer for that.
