★★★★★
Alex Garland’s Civil War is a modern-day Apocalypse Now. Just wow. Masterful stuff. Civil War is a stunning, mournful, riveting journey through a nightmare landscape that will leave viewers shell-shocked. Somehow - and I don’t know how - this distorted reflection remains largely apolitical (or at the very least somehow completely avoids specific partisanship), which I think helps prevent it from preaching to the choir, and instead reaches much further with its critical messaging. It had me mesmerized throughout. I haven’t had a movie emotionally affect me like this, or leave me thinking about it for days afterward in quite some time. It’s beautiful, haunting, and had my heart racing multiple times. The film is truly horrific, especially given the current political landscape in the United States — the fact that this feels like a potential future for the United States is devastating... it isn't a stretch of the imagination and that's scary.
Civil War is fucking brilliant. I’ve never felt such tension and dread during a movie before (especially during Jesse Plemons’ horrific scene) - a sublime narrative on the false freedom of the press and the unyielding lust for violence and power. This is a movie that’s more about the morality of documenting the horrors of our world than it is some deep political commentary - it’s frankly stupid to even try to argue about the politics of it. It’s a photojournalism film, and it’s a damn good one.
Kirsten Dunst’s character says at the beginning of the film in regards to the role of war journalists when it comes to witnessing the horrors of war: “We don’t question — we document so others can question.” This tells you all you need to know about the movie — it unlocks everything Garland is trying to say, about the press, about people, about the movie itself. Instead of choosing a political message, he instead lets the audience engage with the work and decide what it means to them. It is a really smart movie that lets you take what you want from it, it is extremely thought-provoking. Civil War doesn’t soft-pedal its premise but it’s the opposite of preachy or didactic - it’s a muscular horror movie with real heart. I love Alex Garland — much like his debut directorial effort, Ex Machina, this film is not just thought-provoking as hell but also executed to near perfection. Civil War will provoke a lot of disturbing questions throughout the US and the world. But isn’t that kind of the point of film?
I think modern audiences, especially in North America, have a hard time separating politics and partisanship. It really looks like a lot of people don’t know how to process Civil War because it is less a direct political polemic and more like HG Wells’ War of the Worlds in that it imagines events we usually think of as taking place in distant lands instead of happening here. Civil War is not partisan and it shows the brilliance of having a foreigner to the US like Garland to point the lens at the US as they have done with countless conflicts prior. The film is more interested in empathy and its relationship with objectivity. How abstraction leads to apathy. To challenge our increased desensitization to events that simply aren’t normal. The point is to criticize our dispassionate objectivity; the very thing that will lead to our annihilation.
As Edgar Wright has said, this is powder keg cinema. An unflinching look at complete societal collapse and an ode to those who risk it all to tell the story from the frontlines (or perhaps a critique of their inaction). Powerfully acted (Kirsten Dunst is the best she’s ever been and Cailee Spaeny is definitely the future of movies, she is a revelation after Priscilla and now this!), brilliantly directed, and a technical marvel on every level. If this is truly Alex Garland’s final film as a director…. then my god did he ever go out with a bang! What a movie.
(If you couldn’t tell… this is not a fun/action-packed movie to enjoy on a Saturday afternoon… this movie will ruin your day and leave you thinking for days afterward. Cinema at its finest and most thought-provoking.)
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