Civil War cleverly masquerades as a dumber movie
With a polarised election coming up in the U.S, A24 and Alex Garland have been brave enough to carve out a foreboding heart of darkness and smart enough to disguise it as a pedestrian thriller.
I hope Civil War tricks people into watching it. Alex Garland’s visceral, personal thriller is an alarming portrait of societal collapse in a dystopian U.S. The fact A24’s marketing has disguised it as IMAX-ready military porn will hopefully pull in audiences who normally adore films of the gun-toting, trigger-happy, warmongering variety.
I left this film genuinely distressed. Civil War, which follows an armed rebellion by California and Texas against the president’s authority, contains many upsetting scenes. I’m not talking about blood and gore. I’m talking about scenes which show how casual killing becomes in an armed conflict. Scenes which show how human morality so quickly becomes a moveable feast once civility collapses, once collective madness takes hold and tears through safe normality. Reason and magnanimity are abandoned. It doesn’t matter who’s the most skilled diplomat, it doesn’t matter what your principles are. All that matters is who has the bigger stick.
I walked home from the cinema feeling uneasy, unsafe and powerless. In a good way - these feelings remind us not to take social stability for granted. You can watch the news and read death statistics or personal accounts of horrific wars in other countries. But that, for me, will not have the same immediacy as watching an intimate portrayal of a war on western soil.
The film draws stark attention to the role of the media in times of violence. The protagonists are four photojournalists hoping to get the last interview with the U.S President (Nick Offerman, because why not?) before the ‘Western Alliance’ depose of him. Garland takes us on a sorrowful ride through a decimated U.S, introducing us to its bombed out cities and unhinged citizens through the eyes of aspiring photographer Jesse (Cailee Spaeny).
Garland presents other kinds of casual indifference to violence here - the indifference with which we consume horrific news and the indifference with which (some of) the media captures and commodifies suffering. With the belief that they are heralds of objectivity, that their photos act as warnings against war, our photographers chase the personal high of capturing a moment of extreme violence on camera. ‘I’ve never felt more alive’ Jesse says, after emerging from a pit full of corpses and witnessing the ruthless murder of an innocent civilian.
Mr Garland’s direction here is masterful. His camera lets you inhabit the characters’ subjectivity, lets you also chase the thrill of snapping a powerful war photograph. It’s an uncomfortable bodily feeling, this line between horror and high. I felt it physically, and would place Civil War in an emerging genre of ‘anxiety film and television’ that also includes the likes of Boiling Point, Uncut Gems and Industry.
Civil War also warns against the divisiveness and tribalism that have come to define our political discourse. I haven’t been on X (formerly known as Twitter, currently known as cesspit) in a while, but last time I checked everyone was still casting first stones and living in glass houses. We’ve become encamped, entrenched and unwilling to listen to opposing views because it threatens our sense of identity.
In Civil War, no one remembers why Americans are fighting each other. No one explains what political rupture tore the country asunder, or why California and Texas are inexplicably on the same side, despite currently occupying the opposing ends of America’s political spectrum. People keep on fighting and killing with casual indifference simply because other people are fighting and killing them. It feels like an all-too-natural escalation of our current political climate, where a politics of rage threatens debate and compromise.
You might think I’m being dramatic. We might watch this film and sit pretty in the west. We might think of bloody conflicts unfolding elsewhere in the world and tell ourselves ‘that won’t happen here’. But after the images that emerged from Capitol Hill in January 2021 - an armed insurrection at the heart of American politics, fermented in the rabbit holes of internet politics - does the dystopia Civil War posits really sit at such a comfortable distance? Garland’s beautiful tragedy of making mistakes and not learning from them makes for essential viewing, and I hope its marketing entices a crowd who might otherwise pass on a more thoughtful thriller.