Well, say what you like about A24, but they’re not short on variety—between multiversal family drama, eldritch lighthouses, and plain old reflections on childhood drama, here’s something from director Alex Garland that may be trying to hit home in many ways than one for some. With it being unlikely a release in an election year was unintentional, here’s my take on Civil War.
Time to get the obvious questions out of the way—for the most part, the film seems to deliberately avoiding direct comparisons to ongoing politics, be it for better or worse. What we do get for the plot’s background doesn’t exactly match current climates (an alliance between Texas and California because…why not?) and even within its own frame there’s a lot of unanswered questions (it all seems to boil down to a President nobody even in his own states likes—so where’d his support come from in the first place?). Garland, being a British director, didn’t strike me as super interested or knowledgeable in tackling such specifics directly, and truthfully, the film’s overall story could’ve strictly speaking been about an arbitrary civil war in Finland for the difference it’d make.
And that’s because it seems to be less about American politics and more going for a general message about journalism and people’s detachment from such events—with mixed results. Our focus is photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst) setting out to get cutting material from the front lines of this civil war, deciding that the riskier the route, the bigger the reward. She’s joined by colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), older journalist Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and young tagalong aspiring photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), heading out on a road trip across war-torn rural American countryside with all the dangers lurking there.
It’s not long before we see the strengths and weaknesses of what Garland has for us here—there’s no shortage of striking vista shots, be they a battered Manhattan or blazing forests, with the final segments in battle-torn Washington DC being particularly memorable. There’s individual scenes that are quite tense and well-made, or coming with their own enjoyably sardonic sensibility. The sound design is very on point—gunshots here actually sound like actual ear-shaking weapons reports, especially in a theater, which is something you actually rarely see in most pictures.
The main flaw is honestly the characterization—and how it ties into the theme. I see what Garland is doing—trying to comment on how desensitized people can get to the horrors of war, with atrocities galore that our leads snap away as if they’re tourists out and about, and journalist media’s relationship to this. The side-effect is that with some exception the main characters, especially Lee, come off as somewhat sociopathic most of the time—there’s being detached, and then there’s acting as if they live on another plane of existence from things happening literally right outside. Only Jessie and Sammy end up feeling likeable at all in the end, while others also make questionable decisions that also highlight how actual war journalists aren’t quite as deeply embedded with operations as the film suggests.
There is something to be said for how the film strips away looking at political motivations to look at dehumanizing in warfare and how this bleeds across sides—which to be fair there are some scenes that make a good effort at highlighting this. With how polarizing modern political scenes can feel, with simple discourse feeling a rarity, there is certainly something to be read into here. That being said, what little detail of this conflict we get in the film doesn’t seem to add up to what we see—and the characters acting blase about it all doesn’t help either.
You can also say that it deconstructs the fantasies of certain fringes, with there being less sweeping change and more harrowing clashes in bombed-out towns. Almost bringing the reality faced in many a conflict home, as it were. Of course, a civil war in the US would have very sweeping effects that the film doesn’t touch on much either—but at least on a more personal level, it’s also something where I can see what Garland is doing.
Overall, it’s a mixed bag—some striking individual sequences and neat cinematography are hampered by the characterization and themes that while not invalid, feel like they could’ve hit more with just a bit more substance. Division feels rife not only in America these days, so the film’s deliberately discomforting imagery of such things taken to their logical conclusion has its impact, everything in between could’ve used that bit more work. I guess at least, it certainly has some folks talking about how such a brink may truly look…
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