Alex Garland’s pretty and pathetic Civil War
Civil War is a movie I was not sure was capable of disappointing me because I accepted the premise expressed by the marketing demonstrated a low level of political sophistication in its inquiry. I found the movie visually striking at times but, in the end, it is simply afraid or incapable of making a statement more profound than “war makes monsters of us all.” All sides are bad, existing in a vacuum and causing destruction amid existing disorder; the existing power structure and any responses to its mercilessness are wrong. This is one in a long line of movies that think being cynical is the same thing as being wise, but lacks the rhetorical flourishes to take its faux-wisdom to the heights of spectacular entertainment that might preclude an unsympathetic reading. There are lots of movies with bad politics that are still fun to watch. This is a movie that wants you to feel good about being a patronizing centrist – it is the politics of amoral moralism; thinking you’re more righteous than rabble you won’t lower yourself to speak to.
The terrific cinematography and still photography creates a certain bleak beauty which has some charm to it. For this, Rob Hardy is to be lauded. Eventually, though, it feels like one of the lower-tier of Euphoria episodes – all style, no substance. Alongside that, the sound effects work help immerse the audience in Garland’s idea of the experience of being a conflict photographer. Nevertheless, the musical choices which work at some points to create dissonance and in others to reify theme, combine to create a wall of sound between the viewer and the characters, undercutting that intended immersion. It works alongside the pedestrian-at-best dialogue and thin characterization to consistently undermine solid performances, sapping them of their ability to evoke emotion.
But let’s take it back to the beginning, and what it is you are being immersed in and where your emotions are prodded but not aroused. Civil War begins with the audience meeting the president (Nick Offerman) as he prepares himself to give a speech. Then we see professional conflict journalists, photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and writer Joel (Wagner Moura), showing up to a protest in what is revealed to be NYC. Amateur photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) is shooting pictures. A police officer hits her with a baton while pushing angry, presumably thirsty, people away from a water truck. Anyway, Lee gives Jessie her reflective vest, then hides her behind a police car while a young woman holding an American flag detonates a suicide bomb while running toward the water truck. We never learn her aims or her opponents, she just represents senseless violence in the wake of collapse.
Jessie seeks Lee out at the hotel all the journalists are staying, then she and veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) hitch a ride with Lee and Joel, who are headed to D.C. to profile the embattled president. Along the way they find militiamen, soldiers, tragedy, and trauma. The audience gets to see what the U.S. might look like if it splintered into factions killing each other over… well, the movie doesn’t say what exactly, but presumably the distribution and administration of resources, since that’s what politics and war tend to be about. There is something engaging there, especially in the scene-setting shots of the early running and the display of the final showdown which comes about through a twist of escalation.
Civil War rests on an obvious setup – the United States is at war with itself for the second time, this time with twice as many factions. The factions, which you may recognize from the map used in marketing, include the Western Forces of California and Texas, the Florida Alliance stretching from Oklahoma to Tennessee in its northern section and from Louisiana to Florida in its southern, the New People’s Army stretching from the Pacific Northwest to Minnesota, and a chunk of loyalist states covering most of the rest of the country. People responded to this map with incredulity, but we’re all capable of suspending disbelief for a film.
Problematically, and to emphasize that this is a story about how scary and confusing war is, the impetus for the war and the conditions that led to multiple concurrent successions are not explored. While people who have lived and have never lived in California or Texas can be quick to point out their differences, it’s possible that something might unite them against the federal government; Georgia might balk to being part of “Florida,” but DeSantis and Kemp have plenty in common; and so on. The issue is that director Alex Garland doesn’t care to say what the table stakes are – is this a taxation issue, a border issue? It doesn’t matter for the story he’s telling.
Maoists taking over the Pacific Northwest, Mountain West, and Upper Midwest is arguably less believable considering the prevalence of rightwing militias in those spaces, but it’s conceptually interesting. This concept is not explored, though, it’s just a fun fact to help you form insinuations or stress the intensity of the situation. All we know is that they’re referred to as “Portland Maoists,” not what that moniker entails. “New People’s Army” isn’t even in the movie, it’s just in the advertising.
What is easily waved away as a plot or lore problem for the disinterested or open-minded viewer becomes a problem for basic storytelling and character motivation. Journalists are never neutral observers, as often as people within and without journalism confuse objectivity and neutrality. But these journalists don’t have a perspective except that they think the president is bad, as expressed through sarcastic interview prep done during their car ride that informs the audience as to what he’s been up to. Resource issues are alluded to, but it is unclear if they are a cause or effect – we know the Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar, that militia men in Western Pennsylvania are stringing up looters, that Americans are dropping bombs against other Americans in a presumably non-racially-motivated fashion, and that some men with .[1] Garland invites the audience to read what you want into why this is happening, what matters is *that* it is happening, as expressed by some soldiers engaged in a sniper duel later in the movie (“No one’s giving us orders. Someone’s trying to kill us. We’re trying to kill them.”). I find this unsatisfying and lazy, if not cowardly. The only allusion to material politics is that Jesse Plemons’s militia character has a hierarchy of what constitutes a real American, and therefore human deserving of life. But we don’t know any affiliation of theirs, so it doesn’t tell us anything about the world besides that the racists who currently have guns will still have guns in this hypothetical future. Wow, what a shock!
Civil War works to depict journalists simultaneously as callous and disinterested as well as brave truthtellers. They’re all cynicism and hardness wrapped up with idealism and ambition. If Garland has a bone to pick with journalists, this is again something one can permit for the purpose of a film, putting aside one’s own feelings. Artists should have perspectives and it is valuable if they are willing to take controversial stances because it allows people to test their own values against those stances, whatever the level of depth or consideration with which they are presented. I am also permitted to balk at American journalists being blasé about a civil war while simultaneously perplexed and disappointed that other people are trying to exist outside of it. This is a film that tut-tuts at actors and bystanders alike; it is an incoherent blanket condemnation of conflict.
Artists love to hide behind not wanting to be didactic, because it is a freedom to claim an absence of intention with their creation. But all movies have messages, even and especially those avoiding hard stances. Civil War isn’t a movie that’s trying to be about nothing, it’s a movie that’s trying to separate causes from effects while stressing how terrible the effects are. I did not reasonably expect that the president would be transparently coded as one or another American politician – it’s easy for liberals to project Trump onto him and for conservatives to project Biden. Such is the nature of the general consensus around things like the FBI and term limits that, absent the context of impetus, working to disband one and repeal the other doesn’t inform anything.
The stark and beautiful imagery, in the end, feels like it is in service to nothing. Moments of profound loss end up reminding me of the atrocious “He Gets Us” commercials because of the sound separating us from the characters. I feel especially bad for Kirsten Dunst and Stephen McKinley Henderson, who try to convey much while given little.
The only real character arc is unevenly executed – Jessie gets used to the circumstances of the job she is called to do and acts in a way where her contradictory values meet at an obvious climax. A story does not require a stereotypical hero’s journey, but it requires committed execution. The film has an unceremonious and almost abrupt end that creates a final note of dark comedy and ironic triumph. I don’t need ceremony, but I do need you to say something if you want me to think you are profound. Civil War is such a condescending, patronizing, marble mouthed movie that drools the marbles out to ask in the end “Well, what did you learn?” and expect a sort of “Really makes you think” response. If this is Garland’s last film, instead I say, “Good riddance.”
Score: 1.5/5 or 3/10
[1] It’s happened before, but when I think of America bombing Americans I mostly think of MOVE in Philadelphia and the Tulsa Massacre.
pcvulpes 