Don’t venture out to Alex Garland’s Civil War with the expectation that you are going to see a movie that will satisfy a burning itch or agenda about which party would take the blame for casting Americans against each other again on a battlefield like it’s 1863.
This movie at its core is about the human condition with a nod to the frailty of holding on to democracy. Garland skillfully leaves the audience pondering the exact circumstances that would lead to a second US Civil War and jumps right into the ramifications and consequences.
The film follows a group of journalists Lee, Joel, Sammy and Jesse (played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura , Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny) from New York as they traverse through burning, abandoned cities and deserted roads on their way to Washington DC, with the goal of interviewing the president ( played by Nick Offerman) before the Western Forces, led by California and Texas, close in on the White House.
Garland takes the his subject matter to heart (very similar to the directors take on how far we are willing to go with AI integration in his 2014 film ‘Ex Machina’) Like Ex Machina, there is a tremendous amount of respect given to the audience to come to their own conclusions about his intention.
The film pulls no punches. From recent events in Gaza and dating back to Fallujah, we have become accustomed to watching our atrocities safely disconnected from afar via the cable news channel of our choice. To see suicide bombings, mass graves and war crimes against fellow citizens set against familiar tranquil domestic backdrops like Western Pennsylvania is unsettling and in the end, thought provoking.
The strength of the narrative is surprisingly the ethical dilemma that imbedded war correspondents face. At one point, Dunst’s character ‘Lee’ says, without emotion, to a young aspiring journalist “We record so other people ask. You want to be a journalist. That’s the job.”
That clinical advice comes across more as a coping mechanism that the journalists rely on to detach themselves from the horrors of war they are required to document.
Overall the movie left me contemplating the toll it must be for those covering war, questioning our never-ending thirst as consumers for coverage and also how easily this fictional ‘Civil War’ scenario could play out in the midst of our deepening political divisions.
‘Civil War’ is not going to be the feel good movie of the summer, but I am strongly recommending it.
Big score… a 4.6 on the Ol’ Vibe-O-Meter
