A nightmare future that seems all too close
In “Civil War,” writerdirector Alex Garland dares to engage directly with this moment in American political life. As such, his movie deserves a similar engagement by the people reviewing it.
In practical terms, that means admitting what the movie is about, which is Donald Trump and the possible consequences of a second term. Garland may adopt a measured tone, but there’s no mistaking this is a hair-onfire warning about a potential catastrophe. In Garland’s telling, a second term leads to a third term, which leads to a civil war.
The president is not called “Trump”; he’s simply “the president,” but he wears a red tie and uses some of Trump’s phrasings, such as claiming masses of people are saying things they aren’t.
The president, played by Nick Offerman, is the first character we meet, as he practices a speech. His disconnected, uncaring manner makes us uneasy before he’s taken a single action. Yet, in terms of screen time, he’s a minor character. Instead, “Civil War” follows Kirsten Dunst as Lee, a veteran photographer working for Reuters, and Wagner Moura as Joel, her newswriting partner. For most of the film, they’re taking back roads and enduring hazards while traveling to Washington, D.C., joined by an old war correspondent (Stephen McKinley) and a young, aspiring photojournalist (Cailee Spaeny).
Less than 24 hours after seeing “Civil War,” I can’t decide whether I like or dislike Garland’s choice to tell the story from the point of view of the journalists, so I’ll make both cases and let you decide.
On the one hand, this is the story of an American civil war and we want to know everything about it — how it started, what led up to it, who’s fighting whom and how the war is progressing. We don’t care much about photojournalism, and we care only a little about the relationships between the characters. Garland’s choice of emphasis results in some boring patches.
However, Garland’s strategy forces us to pay attention to every snippet of information he doles out, such as the fact that this is the president’s third term and there was an event known as “the Antifa massacre.” Other details we can infer. We may not get everything we want, but we get what we need.
As for the dull patches, they never stay dull for long. This is a tense film that builds in impact as it goes along, and ultimately, it’s riveting.
At the start of the movie, the war has been going on for a while, long enough that the journalists are not shocked that Americans are killing each other. Dunst plays Lee with the deep weariness of someone who has covered atrocity for her entire career, only to see it relocate to her country.
Going into “Civil War,” you need to know nothing more about its story, but if you see it, you will walk out wanting to know more about our story. Garland posits Trump — or rather “the president” — as an American Mussolini or Gaddafi. As entertainment, it’s a good but not great movie, but seen today, it has an outsized impact. And we can only guess what its impact will be in the future. Will this film seem histrionic a year from now, or will it be banned after that?
This much can be said with certainty: In the entire history of American cinema, there have been very few mainstream movies made with such willingness to take on the current moment. Movies are generally escapist or reflective, and war movies are generally made years after a war, rarely during.
In “Civil War,” Garland is doing something new. He’s making a movie before the war in an artist’s effort to make sure that war never happens.