Alex Garland first rose to prominence as a novelist, specifically for The Beach, nearly (ulp) thirty years ago. The film adaptation of the book brought him into contact with Danny Boyle and DNA Films, which contributed to his own move into screenwriting and directing. I still think The Beach (the book) is possibly the most satisfying thing of his that I've encountered, but it's hard to deny his position as one of the most prominent writers and directors of SF and horror films this century – his name is on projects as diverse as 28 Days Later and its sequel, Dredd, Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men, but all containing a fierce, sometimes disquieting intelligence. His new film, Civil War, continues in this vein, and is already being talked about as a possible contender for the Best Documentary award at the 2029 Oscars.

The precise setting is unspecified, but we are in an America which looks essentially contemporary. Nick Offerman plays the President, who at the start of the film declares that the insurgent army of the Western Forces (an alliance between California and Texas, which have both seceded from the union) has experienced a crushing military defeat at the hands of the loyalists. It very quickly becomes apparent, however, that the President is a pathological, self-serving liar (where do they get these ideas from?).

Watching this on TV is hard-bitten photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst), who is in New York City, which is experiencing its own share of violence from the war. Rumours are rife that the rebels are about to make their final push towards Washington DC and implement regime change by force, and she and her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) are contemplating trying to get there first, in search of the million-dollar photo or quote that will define how history remembers these events – as the current administration makes a policy of having journalists executed, this is not without its risks.

They decide to make the trip anyway, taking veteran New York Times reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and rookie journalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) with them – a dangerous journey across the front line of the war. But even away from the fighting they are greeted by horrors of many different kinds, and it becomes an open question as to whether any of them will survive the trip.

So: just a little bit of potential for controversy here, perhaps. It is perhaps worth mentioning that Wikipedia already has a page set up and ready called 'Second American Civil War' (currently it just points to examples of speculative fiction like this one); also that serious academics and commentators have been suggesting that something similar to the situation in this film is closer than most people would like to think, or even that such a conflict is already in progress in a very low-key way. The idea of a 'national divorce', with the Red and Blue states going their separate ways, is startlingly popular according to some polls, despite the immense practical difficulties involved in such an idea.

All this means that there's an urgency about Garland's film, especially in an election year, which wouldn't be there if he was speculating about something less provocative. You could even argue that by inviting people to discuss the idea of 'another civil war' he is even increasing the likelihood of it happening – making a prediction about it, rather than trying to avert it (which I think is more likely the case).

Technically and creatively the film is often extremely successful – most of it is taken up by the nearly-1000-mile road trip, through a landscape often devastated by the war (I suspect some of the imagery here owes a debt to the sort of thing Gareth Edwards was doing in Monsters, back in 2010). It's terrifically photographed and composed – I was thinking 'what a beautiful country' at one point, and then I noticed the bodies hanging from the bridge in the shot. This kind of juxtaposition of the everyday, familiar America, and the stuff of nightmare, is really what fuels the film.

This is never stronger than in the final act of the movie, with gunships and tanks prowling the streets of Washington DC and vicious room-to-room fighting within the White House itself (this recalls, perhaps intentionally and certainly inevitably, the attack on the Capitol building in January 2021). It's viscerally gripping, shocking stuff – but at the same time you find yourself wondering what the point of it is, what Garland is trying to say with his movie.

You would expect it to be cautionary – a message to those who talk rather too easily of 'national divorce' and use violent rhetoric much too comfortably, of how it would really be. You would expect the film to be trying to avert a civil war, not just comment on it. But this is Garland, whose films always have a chilly detachment, a tendency to treat their characters as experimental subjects. It feels like the director is indeed trying to depict what would happen, but he seems somewhat indifferent about the morality of such a calamity.

Even if the film is trying to do something to avert the escalating divisions in the USA, it's really hamstrung by the very fact that the country is so polarised now. The script does its best to be absolutely apolitical – we never learn the President's name, let alone his party allegiance; there are mentions of how he is in his third term, and has dissolved the FBI, but this is not an attempt at satire – there are no characters obviously based on real people here. Likewise, no information is given about the particulars of how the country got into this mess – all of this, no doubt, done with a view to not alienating half of the audience.

As a result the film feels curiously abstract, examining the micro-horrors resulting from the war rather than the nature and causes of the wider conflict itself. Some of this gap is filled by character material about the journalists, exploring their motivations and interest in what they do (something they themselves question as the story progresses) – Dunst hopes she's sending a message, Moura seems largely to be just a thrill-seeker, Spaeny isn't quite sure yet. On this level the film is quite effective, with strong performances from the four leads – apart from them and Offerman, the only significant performance comes from an uncredited Jesse Plemons, who is utterly chilling as a ruthless, bigoted militia soldier (tellingly, the film doesn't explicitly specify which side he is on).

There's an awful lot to admire about Civil War, especially its technical virtuosity and the strength of that final sequence in Washington, but there's a cold objectivity about it which keeps it from being fully successful either as a horror movie (which on some level is what it arguably is) or a cry of warning. Perhaps the very inability of the film to engage with real-world issues without being attacked by one or both sides is symptomatic of the fact that many Americans would rather stick to their beliefs and risk a violent conflict than engage with people they disagree with. It's certainly a very timely, worryingly convincing piece of work, and appropriately unsettling to watch, regardless of whether it's intended as a prediction or not.

Awix

22.04.24 Front Page

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