‘Civil War’ is just reporting, says Alex Garland

‘Civil War’ turns American anxieties into violent big-screen reality

Alex Garland’s films have vividly conjured a virus-caused pandemic (2002’s 28 Days Later), an uncontrollable artificial intelligence (2014’s Ex Machina) and, in his latest, Civil War, a near-future America in the throes of all-out warfare. Most filmmakers with such a record might claim some knack for tapping into the zeitgeist. But Garland doesn’t see it that way. He’s dealing, he says, with omnipresent realities that demand no great leaps of vision. He wrote Civil War in 2020, when societies around the world were unraveling over COVID-19 and the prospect of societal breakdown was on everyone’s minds.

Civil War is an ominous attempt to turn widely held American anxieties into a violent, unsettling big-screen reality. Garland’s film opens Friday — the anniversary, to the day, of when the Civil War began in 1861. And it’s landing in movie theatres just months ahead of a momentous presidential election, making it potentially Hollywood’s most explosive movie of the year.

Civil War is something far more oblique than its matter-of-fact title. The film, which Garland wrote and directed, isn’t mapped directly against today’s polarization. In a war that’s already ravaged the country, California and Texas have joined forces against a fascist president (Nick Offerman) who’s seized a third term and disbanded the FBI.

A band of journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura) makes its way toward Washington, D.C. Much of the film’s disquiet comes from seeing visceral encounters of war — bombings, fire fights and executions — on contemporary American soil. “When things collapse, the speed at which they collapse tends to surprise people — including people like intelligence officers whose job is to watch and predict when these things will happen,” Garland said in a recent interview. “Things are always in a slightly more dangerous state than they might appear.”

The rapidity with which society can disintegrate has long fascinated Garland, the 53-year-old British born filmmaker. Western democracies, he says, can lean too much on their sense of exceptionalism. To him, Civil War isn’t an act of cynicism. It’s a warning shot. “The consequences of it are so serious that to not take the threat seriously would, itself, be another kind of insanity,” says Garland. “It would just be complacent.”

“Civil War,” set in a near-future, instead plays out with more subtle connections to today’s fractured politics and cultural splits. Jesse Plemons plays a heinous militant who interrogates the main characters, asking them: “What kind of American are you?” Though it’s never seen, Charlottesville, Virginia — site of the 2017 white supremacist rally — is referred to as a battle front.

Asked about that choice, Garland replies: “The film is just reporting.” As much as anything, Garland’s film is about the central role reporters play in capturing critical events in lethal conditions. Unbiased reporting, Garland says, has been eroded. In Civil War, it’s literally under attack.

Much of the film’s disquiet comes from seeing war on contemporary American soil