Civil war

Given the largely moronic tenor of most cinematic discourse on social media these days, a film like Civil War is basically the equivalent of writer/director Alex Garland carelessly tossing a lit match over his shoulder as he walks away from hemorrhaging gasoline pumps. The only saving grace is that Garland is so disinterested in ideology, and so deliberate in his attempts to obfuscate any sort of political agenda, that the subject matter’s caustic fumes feel deprived of oxygen; the hyperbolic fallout can’t fully flower when people can’t even articulate why they should or shouldn’t feel either validated or offended.

Civil War grapples with its titular conflict in a dystopian alternate reality and speculative fiction framework that many would argue isn’t all that alternate or speculative (the setup is just credible enough to incite mild perturbation… or maybe just a twinge of indigestion). The unnamed US President (Nick Offerman) gives off a faint whiff of MAGA authoritarianism (he’s supposedly in his third term), while Texas and California have somewhat incredulously joined forces in opposition… beyond that, the background lore is little more than an inscrutable haze. Garland is far more interested in focusing his attention on the nation’s war correspondent ecosystem - specifically photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and her partner-in-crime Joel (Wagner Moura). Lee wears the hardened expression of someone whose facial muscles would require an electrical jolt to form a smile, while Joel plays the devil-may-care jester as an obvious coping mechanism. The two of them are heading into Washington DC - the “belly of the beast” - to try and finagle an improbable interview with the White House (regarded within their circles as a glorified suicide mission - the press aren’t exactly welcome in the Capitol). Along for the ride are Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a New York Times scribe who’s gotten too old for this perilous racket but doesn’t really know how to do anything else, and wet-behind-her-ears cub Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), who Lee reluctantly takes under her wing.

Civil War is, at heart, an episodic road trip movie… and some of those episodes pack a legitimate punch. Not surprisingly, everyone has been talking about Jesse Plemons (he throws at such consistently high heat these days, his mere presence is like cinematic adrenaline), who appears briefly as a chilling sociopath in strawberry sunglasses, armed with an assault rifle and spewing white nationalist rhetoric in an emotionless affect (some have pointed to his character as evidence of the film’s politics, but acknowledging that a) white nationalists exist and b) they’re generally bad barely constitutes a stance… it’s like claiming Indiana Jones is political because he punches out Nazis). But the pieces don’t necessarily gel into a more cohesive whole. Garland seems fixated on the ethical repercussions of war journalism - of prioritizing impartiality in the face of atrocity - which is compelling subject matter… it’s also a theme filmmakers have been grappling with for literally decades, dating back to 80s dramas such as Salvador, The Killing Fields, and The Year of Living Dangerously. It’s a peculiar angle for Garland to gravitate towards - especially given he has no particularly fresh insights in spite of the unconventional backdrop - so it’s a good thing he at least picked his four leads with such care. Spaeny - who popped off the screen as a teenager in Pacific Rim: Uprising and was heartbreakingly good in Mare of Easttown - feels like she’s inching ever closer to stardom. She’s 25, but her age feels entirely fluid - within her relatively small body of work, she’s shown an astounding ability to appear significantly younger - or more mature - than her years. She partners effectively with Dunst, who no longer has the photogenic glow of her teenage stardom, but wears her current age extremely well. Her features have a certain lived-in gravity about them now… and it’s her hollow stare that so often holds the center of the frame in its cool grip. She’s never been more intriguing as an actress.     ​

As a filmmaker, Garland is an imperfect purveyor of ambitious originality (most regard the 2014 techno thriller Ex Machina as his magnum opus, but I always gravitated more towards Annihilation, his unnerving 2018 descent into hallucinatory sci-fi-flavored madness). He produces imagery - particularly in the third act - that one can’t help but find queasily affecting… helicopters swooping over the smoldering ruins of the Lincoln Memorial, a Special Forces squad turning the corridors of the White House into a bullet-riddled Call of Duty set piece. The sound design is stunning, the gunfire like a percussive symphony played on your eardrums. At its best, this is genuinely intense moviemaking - a reminder why Garland has amassed such a fiercely loyal following. But the film keeps you firmly, frustratingly at arm’s length. One can hardly fault Garland’s reluctance to tread the sort of knee-jerk path that inevitably foments a discursive trash fire. But there’s something almost cowardly in the way the film capitalizes on an inflammatory hook while refusing to truly engage with America’s cultural currents. Many have described the film as frightening, but that feels more like projection. This Civil War is little more than the stuff of illogical fantasy, its audacity deprived of any real focal point. Garland’s refusal to take sides feels like a miscalculation at best and vexingly cynical at worst. He’s made an incendiary device of a movie that ultimately smolders harmlessly. It's disappointing. To pseudo-quote Alexander Hamilton (or to simply quote the movie Sucker Punch) “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.”