Premiering a month ago beneath the belly of America’s heartland at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Alex Garland’s Civil War arrived with a concussive blast for audiences perplexed by the film’s trailers. The marketing campaign noted a bizarrely polarized United States with an unexpected alliance between the politically adjacent California and Texas as a warring force against the President. The geographical layout is a sizzling selling point for audiences, but it appears that Alex Garland has no intention of establishing the rules of his realized America for the viewers. Historically opposed parties that haven’t united since Ronald Reagan must have a strong catalyst for coming to terms with one another, but no such details are explored. Although we may be too caught up in the forged alliances, dismantled systems, and extended dictatorial service the film sold us, Civil War is less interested in trademarked politics and more stricken by the moral dilemmas of photojournalism.
Starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson as photojournalists who start a road trip to Washington D.C. to land an interview with President Nick Offerman, Civil War is a naive, illiterate, reductive movie. In Alex Garland’s newest (and suddenly final) film, pay no mind to the intelligence you’ve been gifted when you attempt to waft through the gunpowder of a misfire.
Alex Garland landed with an A24 pillar, Ex Machina, just nine years ago. A stunning artificial romance gone haywire in the isolated quadrants of a tech CEO’s home. Garland showed he could be a noteworthy filmmaker in a film that probed the emergence of consciousness in a female body imprisoned by the walls built around her. Emerging female consciousness transcended into a more hallucinatory shape in Garland’s following film, Annihilation. Perhaps his most beloved and extraordinary feature, Garland continued the themes of gutsy prowess and intuition overcoming the escalating insecurities of men amidst a more cosmic, uncontrollable force. Garland’s first two features clearly illustrate a theme beyond the gestures of passing acknowledgment, but he quickly regressed into a misguided binary in Men, and now, in Civil War, a frustrating disregard for fully realized storytelling.
Although it could be the continuation of a rather lazy marketing campaign, a title as apt as Civil War shouldn’t be afraid of political thresholds. There are plenty of movies that have been mismarketed before, yet Garland’s story fails to follow through on his premises. As a viewer, we’re tossed into a supposed "near future" during the President’s third term, and the streets rumble with unrest, but the scope is limited. There is no proof of concept in Garland’s U.S.A., and that becomes transparent very quickly. As viewers with biases, sides, takes, preconceptions, and notions, we become displaced by Garland’s vision in a flash, as there is no room for agency in his characters or the audience.
This could be intentional in more capable hands, but the more numbers he paints, the less the picture makes sense. Dunst, Wagner, Spaeny, and McKinley Henderson are empty photojournalists with a drive to shoot the reality of their situation. “Shoot it”, Lee (Dunst) tells Jessie (Spaeny) as they approach a downed helicopter in front of a vacant JCPenney. Jessie focuses her lens and snaps a few photos before the next pit stop in the narrative. At this moment, it is clear that Garland views a camera as a tool that is just as powerful as an automated rifle built for war.
The shutter snaps, Jessie reloads the reel, and she positions herself at the right angle to “shoot it”. Visually, audibly, and metaphorically, a camera lens can pierce a subject to reveal a harrowing matter-of-fact truth. This could perpetuate a forthcoming realization of morality amidst immoral times, or blur the lines between horrifying action and transposed truths, but Garland’s images lack vulnerability. Through his typical shallow-focus depth of field, he foregrounds his characters against an environment that becomes indistinguishable. Much like Ex Machina, Annihilation, and even Men, his female characters become lost in an environment established by the abrasive constructs of men that could be strikingly beautiful under positive circumstances. Here, the women are meaninglessly outlined without the necessary interior stakes that should be paid off.
Men doesn’t do this very well either, but that film is obviously over after ten minutes. Whereas Civil War charts a thousand-mile course without administering a perspective, and right when it should have a notable position (with itself, not with volleying politics), it’s over and nothing adds up. This happens when a filmmaker is too comfortable with saying nothing because they probably don’t believe in anything.
Even though the film’s plotting has some faint similarities to Apocalypse Now, there is zero confidence in exposing a truth true to the spirit of photojournalism. The story is wound so tight and the road so clear, the deliberations of Garland’s penmanship strip the integrity away from the spontaneous moments a camera would stumble upon capturing. Every pit stop makes a notable “point” about something so objectively political that the subjective nature of people acting on impulse to court a narrative is practically insulted. Although it was filmed and released, it seems clear that Garland never made up his mind on whether he wanted to address a forthcoming political dark age or highlight the press as angelic illuminations amidst stripped-bare mortality. There is no provocation or answer to either at any point during the runtime.
Civil War is one of the more naive movies of the past few years. An election-year film basking in the glory of political unrest posturing itself as a movie of the moment that fails to distinguish itself is one of the great practical jokes this side of April Fool's Day. Alex Garland’s film doesn’t reveal truth, or reap honesty away from comfortable viewers, nor does it disconcert conscious people -- it zombifies them. Garland absorbs so much light in his images and manages not to refract any of it onto a wound worth patching up or reopening. His manic sequences of war are illegible, and the motivating forces suppressed within them are nullified by socio-political ineptitude.
We’re five and a half months removed from October 7th, and three years and three months removed from January 6th. Two instances we could point to as recent catalysts of journalism becoming manipulated by the news to subject an unknowing viewer to the framework of false motives and improper truths. Garland elects to romanticize photojournalists as neutral seers chronicling the madness of war, but he fails to admit they too could be culprits of insisting on narratives, manipulating footage, or illegitimate purveyors of facts. Especially in an age where information is streamed at an incomprehensible rate whether it’s on the television or in the palm of your hand. How could Civil War possibly send up flares about the near future if it abstains from acknowledging that the press is just as culpable in highlighting and headlining atrocities if it fits the agendas they’re working for? This is why Civil War is a politically incongruent and reductive disaster deserving of negatively connotated hyperbole.
In an age where good information is becoming increasingly difficult to come by, Civil War fails to inform the audience that capturing the atrocities of war, or socio-political unease, doesn’t always work to fit the best interests of unified people. We could point to films like Nightcrawler (2015) as a great example of madness embroidering photojournalism, but Civil War has no such nuance or capability of exploring its topics with aggressive revelations within the scope it has chosen to chase after. Instead, Garland sidelines the viewer into a position where we have no choice but to stare at the shoddily plotted horror with emotionally blank registers that succumbs to the noise it rumbles with.
Garland revokes every character's press pass by removing all the motivating factors for these people to become something beyond mythic statues of all-seeing liberty. There is zero interiority here, with as much subtlety as a bull rampaging through a china shop, and yet, Civil War is positioned as an anti-war film seeking to make a statement about photoreal revolution without acknowledging who these people are outside of their job. If Garland was as swift as he once was, maybe he could sprinkle some ideological conflict into the group to give the audience something more personable, just, or (and I know I’m asking for a lot here) conflicting to grapple with. It is baffling how frequently his images reduce his characters, and simultaneously the audience, into a brainless state.
No measurements of sound design could salvage this film into something intrinsically cohesive or identifiable as a cinematic text. It doesn’t force the audience to reconsider anything about where we are now, how we got here, or what will become of us if we don’t trust the journalists who will get the truth for us. Civil War could be considered a movie of the moment if we step back and acknowledge it as the farcical half-measure with obtuse needle drops that it is. A suddenly common denominator in blockbuster-ified “art” that operates with minimal consideration for the policies that breach our proximity of day-to-day living to emotionally crippling degrees.
Civil War is a helpless, gutless film that will reduce any conversation to a centrist viewpoint. Great cinema can provide valuable information, and if this is considered a valuable political outlet in trying times, I fear for the future where we trust everything we see and leave the subjects unchallenged by our estimations. If you want a war film that seeks to use a lens to capture the degradation of conscious species, look toward Terence Malick’s The Thin Red Line -- a eulogy for the spirit of humankind amidst the atrocities of governed battlefields.