CIVIL WAR Review
Alex Garland's Newest Film is Terrifying Because of How Plausible It Actually Is
Alex Garland's CIVIL WAR is a warning about our possible future and the importance of the Fourth Estate, especially reporters and photojournalists who go into war zones and report in other dangerous situations. It points out that they literally give their lives to inform the public. It takes the step of imagining that the war zone is the United States.
In CIVIL WAR, the horror comes home. Filled with disturbing images and wound to the breaking point with ruthless tension, it gnaws at your nervous system with each new scene.
CIVIL WAR is a very exciting film with compelling characters that explores what makes reporters run into danger for the greater good. This is very important when reporters and journalists are currently being demonized and dehumanized. Established news sources are being dismantled by private equity groups and bought by billionaires. Be warned, this is not only destabilization of our society, by removing access to truthful reporting, it is preparation for the future.
There are many opinions about Alex Garland's new film CIVIL WAR, almost like Apaches flying over the U.S. countryside. The film’s central idea seems to immediately fill people’s minds with anger and panic. It seems the title alone is enough to rile some people up. Given the history of the United States, especially in the last five years, that’s not surprising.
It has made many people angry, which is part of the film’s purpose. It means to engender a strong emotional response from nearly anyone who watches it. It is a very entertaining movie, but one that makes you question why you feel that way. It’s not a provocation; it is a haunting premonition.
Many times, I have felt, and I have said, that artists who tap into the collective unconscious through their creativity feel things coming. They may not understand why they are doing it, but it’s how they deal with their own thoughts and fears. They may not be able to articulate it in an interview, but it’s going to be in the film, even if confusion is what they feel.
The United States is at the juncture of an actively dangerous part of its history. Those who don’t want to give up their power have supporters who are willing to destroy others to keep the status quo alive. Violence is their tool, and it has the effect of silencing criticism, as those who report the news become frightened to tell the truth, and for those who won’t shut up, in extremis, a bullet in the head silences their voices forever. Alex Garland clearly wants to make clear the purpose of journalists and their importance in our society.
The film shows why journalists go into the dangerous situations to do what they do. There’s nothing quite like getting the story and showing people the truth. Filmmakers have that in common with journalists, which is why there is a segment of our nation that has a grudge against Hollywood. Journalists are driven to tell the truth, no matter the cost, but admittedly, being in danger is a rush that one can get used to and crave. Are journalists adrenaline junkies? You might as well as if all artists are adrenaline junkies because the high is similar. News is put into its own category, but it is also art. Journalists write stories and take photographs that move and inform other human beings. It’s all about truth, except when it isn’t.
Of course, there are many post-apocalyptic movies and TV shows that show a destroyed America, but those are strictly part of a fantasy construct, not a more realistic one that is caused by two factions in the United States coming to blows. It’s safe to watch The Walking Dead because everyone knows that zombies don’t exist. But the January 6 extremists and their leader, who tried to hold onto power by denying the results of the 2020 election, do exist and are rattling their sabers and licking their lips as the 2024 election approaches.
Alex Garland has refused, mostly, to put specific labels on events and characters and give you a belabored backstory explaining exactly how the United States was embroiled in its Second Civil War, and it has enraged people that he didn’t do that. I think it also angers people in the United States to see our country in a state that we frequently see in other countries and have a blase detachment from. It is what Americans deserve, as we usually watch genocides and war-torn scenes from the comfort of our own homes. Some people in our country take a stand on such things, while others are of the viewpoint that it doesn’t touch them, so why should they get involved?
It can’t happen here.
It can’t happen here.
It can’t happen here?
There are even some stand-ins for the privileged positions of Americans in the movie. In CIVIL WAR are pockets of the country where people are carrying on with their normal lives as if nothing is wrong. It doesn’t touch them, so why should they get involved?
You have only to ask yourself, who is it that hates journalists? Who is always crowing about “Fake News?” The film provides you with clues the whole way through, like when Sammy tells Lee and Joel that in the capitol, journalists are shot on sight and when Sammy gives a sample question to Joel, asking about the president’s policy of using airstrikes on American citizens. It should be obvious when you see that the President is in his third term, which is something that would have only happened after the President refused to relinquish power. Does that remind you of anyone?
Journalists aren’t shown as saviors or gods. They are shown by CIVIL WAR as regular human beings who seek purpose in life through warning their people of danger. One of the most crushing weights on humans is a lack of purpose in their lives. They cry out, “Why am I here?”
Some seek purpose through society’s structured lifestyles, marriage, children, jobs. Artists, including journalists, seek purpose through communication. They seek to better our society and our lives, to protect others. It’s what they have in common with those who choose other lives of service like workers in NGOs who also put themselves into danger. The only thing that they ask, as they realize that their calling could kill them, is that they don’t die for nothing.
They ask that their death has meaning. That they died to save someone else or they died so that the truth would reach the masses. They are okay with death, so long as it serves a purpose that benefits the human race. The worst ignomity is to have died without getting the story.
Here’s the synopsis: from filmmaker Alex Garland comes a journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before the rebel factions descend upon the White House.
The film stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman. Karl Glusman and Jesse Plemons also appear in the film, with Plemons playing the chilling role of an aw-shucks soldier who is not what he seems.
CIVIL WAR’s cast ranges from the spiritually exhausted Lee Smith (Dunst), the charismatic Joel (Moura), the eager and inexperienced Jessie (Spaeny), and the heroic Sammy (McKinley), who is the fount of wisdom and connection to the storied history of journalism since he is an employee of the Old Grey Lady or The New York Times. Lee and Joel work for Reuters.
The cast is perfect in their roles, right down to the actors who are only in single scenes. The main cast’s camaraderie is real, as are their disagreements. You can feel the anger, the pain and the fear and see it in their faces. You can feel it emanating from their core, whether they are joking with each other or screaming.
Stephen McKinley as Sammy brings a very special presence to the film. He’s a compass—not just for morality but also for what the group of reporters should do. The journalists in the film have a tendency to ask each other what to do when they sense danger. Reporters in such circumstances survive and are successful because they have good instincts. As the oldest and most experienced reporter, the others ask him what to do when confronted by danger. He is the movie’s moral center, and his righteousness and strength is tinged with sadness, but nothing will stop him. He’s one of the characters, like Lee, who has a fearsome intelligence behind his eyes. Don’t count him out just because he uses a cane.
Nick Offerman, as the president who is first seen practicing a speech he is about to make on television, uses his instrument excellently in service to the film. He is a white man who is normally seen as an authority, who is trying to convince himself that everything he is saying is not a lie and not really succeeding. There’s a kind of sick desperation clinging to his person that is some very fine acting. He is terrifying and pathetic at the same time. He’s the ethicial opposite of Sammy.
Kirsten Dunst’s character, Lee Smith, is weighed down by the sorrow of so many other war zones that have finally come to the United States. Lee’s sharp intelligence and willingness to act are what make her the celebrated photographer that she is, but with an untreated case of complex PTSD, the terror of her life is getting to her. Dunst’s work is quiet but fantastic. You can feel her deep sorrow and guilt as she questions her own actions and the burnout. She’s a woman at the end of her rope who somehow holds it together.
Wagner Moura is the group’s persuader, Joel. He’s the reporter and the interviewer with camera-ready charisma that also helps him get them out of jams. He’s not judgmental and is easy to get along with. If anything, he is the character that most of the audience can relate to and like. His character’s arc is one of a person who finally learns to do judge and his silent screams pump freon into your veins. He is fantastic.
I don’t know who the actress is, but there’s one in a scene with a protest where there is a closeup of the woman’s face. At that moment, you know exactly what her purpose is and exactly what she is about to do if you know what to look for. It’s that Hitchcockian suspense for the people who see it.
Incredible work from the entire cast, right down to the extras.
There are scenes of brutality and torture, one that actually reminds me of a moment from The Crazies from 2010, which is a remake of the George Romero original. It’s in a car wash, and the scene is horrific as a victim’s mouth gouts blood while he pleads for help, which hammers home that the characters in the film are walking through a living nightmare. Garland has experience in the horror genre, as he wrote 28 Days Later and Annihilation, so he already knows how to press those buttons.
Much has been made out of the supposition that Garland doesn’t tell you who is who politically. But I think he has; he just hasn’t slapped obvious labels on everything. The film takes the wise course of allowing the audience to come to its own decision about the plot and the characters.
You can tell that Garland's work hit its mark because it makes MAGA and MAGA-affiliated people lose their minds. CIVIL WAR’s characters and their morality, or lack thereof, is made perfectly clear. I think the film’s stance is that there are the survivors and the dead. Some of the survivors are good people, as are some of the dead. Sometimes goodness and humanity win, and sometimes it doesn’t, and there’s no way to stop it until you fire that last bullet.
That’s the warning. In a war, there’s no guarantee that the good guys will win or that you and those that you love will survive. You might end up on your knees weeping while your loved ones are being rolled into a pit and covered with lime while a psychopath aims a gun at your head. So take the warning, sent by Garland and photo journalists in war zones: don’t do it.
Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST has dealt with similar criticism. There was criticism that there was something wrong with the film because it didn’t expressly show the Nazis committing the atrocities and murdering Jewish people and others exterminated in the camps. It did send that message through the sound design, but that wasn’t enough for some of the more prosaic.
Kirsten Dunst was asked what she thought Glazer’s Academy Awards acceptance speech meant, and she responded, “My interpretation was he was saying that genocide is bad.” I think a similar thing could be said about CIVIL WAR.
Subtlety in art has the danger of allowing people to create their own fantasies about what the artist intends. But that kind of subtlety demands that the audience become involved and learn. The audience should always be wary of cinematic propagandists. Such filmmakers have an agenda that they want to push and are not concerned in the slightest about making art. They are not using film to ask questions; they are using it to make you choke down the answers they are shoving down your throat.
The film’s music and sound design work in tandem. The sound in the film is used to throw you off balance and create fear, and so is the music, with some exceptions. The score was composed by Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow (Free Fire), with chilling drones and organic moments of respite.
Simon Astall was the music supervisor, and he gathered quite a roster of incredibly powerful songs to unnerve the audience. Electronic musical pioneers Silver Apples’ song Lovefingers, which is filled with foreboding, opens the musical salvos. Suicide, another group of electronic musical pioneers, has two songs, one is Rocket USA, which is propels action, and Dream Baby Dream which is more sobering.
The songs are meant to stand out more than just provide background, in particular, the use of De La Soul’s Say No Go is jarring in its seeming jocularity considering the scene that it is used in, but the placement jars you out of your complacency. Sturgill Simpson’s Breakers Roar is a song about love and the dreamlike quality of life while you are in danger.
All of the songs are meant to leap into the ears of the audience and disrupt the normal thoughts that are programmed into us as film audiences. They provide context and set the imagination free. While listening to Suicide during the film, I felt the wind rushing by my face and a wild chaos all around me which is my normal reaction to the band’s music.
In particular, Lovefingers’ odd syncopation and growling drones, along with its deadpan lyrical performance with the appearance of a fire in the distance, triggered a feeling of unreality. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a fire burning out of control with no fire engines there to take care of it in a city, but it is a terrifying thing to consider that our normal safeguards are gone. The song and the fire made it feel like the world was broken in a way that was truly frightening.
The sound is also meant to grab you. The sounds of gunfire and bombs are very loud. One of the film’s most frightening moments, almost a jump scare, is a cut from a montage scene directly to an automatic weapon firing into a building. From the absolute silence in the second half of a scene after a bomb exploded, which mimics the survivors hearing loss after an explosion, to the drone note that cuts off all sound in another key scene. But that gunfire. You can’t disassociate from it like many of us do in films with a lot of gunfire. Every time a gun is fired, the crack of the rifle stabs into your eardrums. They are not going to let you escape from what those gunshots mean in real-life terms. The filmmakers are not going to let it become that kind of entertainment.
The cinematography of Rob Hardy, who has worked with Garland before on Ex Machina and Annihilation, is made of stark digital reality. The image is so clear and realistic that it feels like you could reach into it. You could be inside of the image, which serves to pull the viewer in ever more strongly. A scene when the group drives through a forest fire is one of the most beautiful images of the film with one character delighted by the flames, which is a very striking image tinged with great sadness that connects to the characterization.
As for the possible coding of clothing in the film. I think the coding is mostly related to what is available and related to the question stated by a character as a test. “What kind of American are you?” Main characters wear the same clothing for days and don’t seem to have any other options. Soldiers and militia are wearing a mix of regular clothes, in one particular scene that was criticized for being coded as “Bugalaoo Boys”. In that scene, I think that the costuming had only to do with differentiating the three main fighters with primary colors, red, blue, and canary yellow, two of the men wore patterned shirts and the other wore a longsleeve with no pattern.
The only coding that I saw was that it was difficult to differentiate which side anyone was on. Some wore full camo, others wore a mix of camo and regular clothing. One soldier responds to Joel’s question of which side they were fighting on by saying, “They are trying to kill us, so we are trying to kill them.” It goes to the point that the film raises. We are all Americans even though we are fighting each other. The character that asks this question is playing a game. It’s racist and meant to create fear in the journalists, but if you look at his victims, that doesn’t really matter to him. No matter what the answer is, he’s going to kill you. In a civil war, you don’t know who is going to try and murder you and for what reason, if they even have one.
CIVIL WAR is filled with the terrible mayhem of war brought home to the United States. Brilliantly conceived, it shoots a barrage of ideas straight towards your brain and assaults your senses with sound and furious urgency. Will you listen?
Alex Garland’s CIVIL WAR has more questions than answers and leaves you to make those choices and find the answers yourself.