By Mark Fields
Alex Garland’s Breathtaking New Thriller Hits Horrifying Close to Home
Writer-director Alex Garland has taken us to some terrifying and tripped-out places in his previous films Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men. But his fevered imaginings have never hit quite so close to home as his newest heady thriller, Civil War. This movie posits a possible future for the U.S. that is all too credible in our current days of polarization, made all the more distressing because it offers little explanation of the breakdown and even less comfort for a positive resolution.
Civil War takes place in an American landscape divided between a besieged central government in DC and several secessionist factions, the strongest of which is the Western Forces (WF) who are closing in on the capital. The story is told through the eyes of a small group of media representatives (two photographers, two reporters), who are attempting to get to Washington to interview the embattled President. Their journey, unwinding as a progression of encounters – some tragic, some comic – captures the near-complete breakdown of social order. For me, the chaotic nature of these vignettes slyly recalled the structure and visceral impact of Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, or even its literary forebear, The Heart of Darkness.
Garland’s Civil War screenplay, cleverly, refuses to disclose the nature of the conflict that led to this conflict…though it does fleetingly drop tantalizing hints along the way. And he and his screenplay resolutely declines to take a clear side. Safe to say, the engaged viewer will have his or her preconceived notions tested.
The cast of Civil War is uniformly strong. Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a renowned wartime photojournalist. is the moral center of the film, and her emotional journey – often depicted in long, unblinking takes of her face – is tumultuous. The rest of her media cadre – Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson – are also compelling. Garland’s direction is taut, and the episodic set pieces, horrifyingly familiar and yet not, quietly build to a devastating conclusion in the nation’s capital. I have some quibbles with narrative details in the third act that strain credibility. But Garland has rightly focused on a larger point he’s trying to make, and a few quibbles are inevitable casualties to his effort.
Movies, of course, don’t exist in a vacuum, and I think that part of the experience of this film, will be to see how our fractious real body politic will react to Civil War. I imagine some of its subtleties will be misconstrued.
Nevertheless, Civil War remains a striking and timely commentary on how quickly things can get out of control and for reasons that are neither obvious or easily undone. Given the disturbing subject matter, I can’t say that I like this film. I will say, however, that it resonated with me deeply.
