Director: Alex Garland
Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson
In an alternate reality or possible future, a Trump-esque American president (Nick Offerman) spouts empty propaganda about the prospects of his armies in the on-going civil war of the film’s title. Viewed on a television set in a New York hotel room, war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) points her lens at the screen and she looks like a marksman preparing to sniper. One feels positively encouraged to think about Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth, right down to the motif of stage and performance. It’s a moment that will be echoed at the end of the film in an entirely different set of circumstances.
Some may feel irked that Garland doesn’t verbally articulate the politics of his fantasy conflict (though the pointers to define the sides in his schism are all perfectly clear). There’s an argument being made that Civil War represents a missed opportunity, even an act of compromise or cowardice on Garland’s part to fully engage with the splintered ideologies that have caused genuine rifts in American society for all the world to see, particularly over the last decade. That by shrugging these things off he’s made a frustratingly apolitical Modern Warfare variant.
But taking that position also entails deliberately ignoring what Civil War does show us. The things it does spend it’s time on, and the story it’s actually telling, which isn’t about entrenched ideologies, but about inspiration, impulse, and vocation. The story here isn’t western separatists vs. the state – that’s window dressing – it’s one generation inspiring the next in a more profound and individual way. The main poster art for the movie is of the torch held aloft by the Statue of Liberty (sandbagged and sentried), further suggestive of American freedoms under attack. But Civil War is really interested in personal heroes. In how Lee inspires fledgling photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). It’s the passing of a baton, and an overture from Garland – a photographer of stories – to us.
If Civil War resembles any past Garland movie project, it’s 28 Days Later. Here, we’re Cillian Murphy at the beginning; suddenly introduced into a radically changed world with precious little context, turning in place, looking for handholds (don’t worry, there’s some sparse exposition to acclimate us). From there, it’s a road movie, as tense as it is disarmingly picturesque.
Lee and her professional colleague Joel (Wagner Moura) are bound for D.C., looking to get an interview with the president before his White House falls and he’s summarily executed by the Western Forces (an unlikely-sounding alliance between California and Texas that has splintered off from the union). Jessie – rescued from a bomb by Lee in the film’s opening – manages to charm her way a spot on the trip. Completing the quartet is Stephen McKinley Henderon’s Sammy; a veteran journalist who probably ought to have gotten out of the game by now.
Sammy’s compulsion to continue regardless prefigures something Jessie will learn on her journey; that war correspondence is intense and that the adrenaline rush of it is a kind of drug. Garland keeps the combative sequences in Civil War relatively few and far between. They act as punctuation. But they’re staged loudly, with immediacy, and captured in a manner that’s both logical and brutally engaging. Said immediacy conveys the exciting sense of peril Jessie encounters. The revelation of it. The hit – for her, for us – is tangible.
For logistical reasons their journey from New York to D.C. requires a rather scenic route, and so Garland unfurls an episodic narrative, picking up experiences as the foursome gradually draw closer to their target. The pacing matches any long car journey, pocked with fits and starts. This isn’t a propulsive action movie (though it delivers when it needs to), but rather a bonding character piece.
Dunst gives a great performance. Her Lee is detached and withdrawn. Dunst internalises the scars of a career becoming jaded from human atrocity, but Lee’s experiences on the road – and her connection to Jessie – crack into something that the character seems to have long-buried. It’s not showy work, but it’s very good work. Spaeny, for her part, continues to impress as a youngster discovering the limelight. There’s a metatextual element to these two in particular finding these roles. The Sofia Coppola veteran giving guidance to the new young queen.
For his part, Garland dips into the sensibilities that steered him so strongly through Annihilation. With Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow back on scoring duties, a similar sense of contrast is provided as gently plucked folk-style guitars abut silent scenes of combat and horror. Visually, Garland’s tendencies connect back to Annihilation, too. He uses the Shimmer here to represent shellshock or emotional dissonance, making Civil War feel ethereally psychedelic. At his core a writer, the images he opts for frequently reveal a genuine vision for his work. His frames feel considered, iconic photos of their own. While a night journey through a literal rain of fire is possibly the most beautiful, otherworldly thing he’s yet put to film (doesn’t hurt the amorphous Joseph Conrad vibes this whole movie has, either).
So it’s a shame he’s been so vocal about giving it up. The recent press tour supporting Civil War has found Garland weary of the process of directing, vowing to quit and refocus as a writer. He sounds like a more emotionally-honest Lee from his movie, who over the course of Civil War finds that opening herself up to vulnerability has it’s risks. Her ability to continue as an impartial bystander comes into question, and she looks to Jessie as a possible replacement for her own efforts. That’s where the fire is now. So Garland turns to us – all potential filmmakers with our smartphones and tech savvy – and tries to seek out the new blood. If making a film is a war unto itself, who has the grit to take it on next?
I’d imagine he’ll be back, though. Like Sammy, maybe, he’ll find himself missing the combat, the heat and intensity. If moviemaking really is Garland’s personal civil war, his movie about it seems to be telling us that it’s hard to give up, and that you keep going ’til you die trying.
Yes, a greater political engagement with modern American strife might’ve made the film spikier, thornier, more – ugh – ‘relevant’. But it would also have likely pushed the human element at its centre to the sidelines. And the human element here is the really good bit. It’s a strange and garish feature, to be sure. Overripe in places and jarring in some of its tougher choices (violence against minority characters has become an awkward trend in his brief filmography. If this is a pointed reflection of the world, that point isn’t rendered explicitly). But otherwise? This might be his best-made film.
See you next time, Alex. I hope.
The Lost Highway Hotel 