A Nation Divided -CIVIL WAR
By Maribeth Thueson
Dystopian movies always take place in a fictional world or in the distant future, right? And news stories about internal conflicts always come from other countries, like Rwanda, Syria, or Serbia, right? Not in the unsettling Civil War, which is set in the here and near-now United States. It’s disturbing to see an aerial view of a sunny suburb, only to realize that smoke is rising from destroyed houses, or to see a panorama of a mighty city in which buildings have been blown apart by bombs, and realize that that’s where you live.
And that’s the point. The film is a thought experiment in what happens when polarization gets out of control and the people who advocate for a civil war actually take up arms. The film never explains how the war started, although the president (Nick Offerman) is serving an illegal third term and has disbanded the FBI. There is a passing reference to “the anti-fa massacre,” but we don’t know if the massacre was done to or by the anti-fa movement. All we know is that the country has splintered into factions, with one led by Florida, one by Oregon, with the most powerful faction being a coalition of California and Texas, which have seceded from the union and formed the Western Forces.
It may be hard to imagine California and Texas making common cause, but this is just one way writer/director Alex Garland plays with expectations. For instance, in this world where anybody can wear camo fatigues and pick up a rifle, you would think that fighting units would break down along racial lines. But in a militia group where some of the men are wearing Hawaiian shirts — and you can’t help but link them to the racist and anti-government Boogaloo Bois — the buddy they are desperately trying to save is Black. Folks of all ethnicities mingle peacefully in a refugee camp. And the Western Forces assault team is led by a Black woman. Garland purposely doesn’t make the movie about America’s current politics; the danger is polarization itself, not any particular ideology.
Against this backdrop, four print journalists leave the semi-safety of their New York hotel to drive to Washington, D.C. to get an interview with the President before the Western Forces take the city. Joel (Wagner Moura), who is addicted to the adrenaline rush of violence, plans to conduct the interview, while Lee (the excellent Kirsten Dunst) will take photographs. Veteran reporter Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) accompanies them, and at the last moment greenhorn photographer Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) hops in, too.
Lee is a veteran of civil wars in other countries, and the memories haunt her. She has shut down her emotions in order to capture the shots that she hopes will affect others. As she says, “I thought I was sending a message home: don’t do this. But here we are.” She has vaguely protective instincts toward the naive Jessie, who idolizes her. The see-saw relationship between them, as Lee takes Jessie under her wing and Jessie learns the ropes, is the emotional center of the film.
Their road trip takes them through a horror show of vignettes. A trio of rednecks has tortured and lynched two of their neighbors, partly, one of them says, because “he laughed at me in high school.” Two snipers take shots at each other across a field full of surreal Christmas decorations. When the journalists ask one of them who he is shooting at, he says he only knows that the other guy is trying to kill him, so he is trying to kill the other guy.
The worst moment comes when the reporters come upon a rifle-toting group shoving bodies into a mass grave. Fearing that they may be next, Joel pleads, “There has to be some mistake. We’re Americans!” Whereupon the leader, a terrifying Jesse Plemons, says “What kind of American are you?” There’s no right answer to that; casual violence has become such a way of life that it’s just easier to kill someone than to argue with them.
The journalists seem curiously unaffected by what they see, partly out of fatigue, and partly because, as Lee says, “Once you start asking those questions you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record so other people ask.” Only no one is asking. There are no good guys who swoop in to save the day. Even Lee eventually loses her cool, and when her strict control breaks, it’s more frightening than the firefight happening around her.
Civil War has ignited a small firestorm of controversy, mostly because it refuses to take political sides, but that is its greatest strength. Everybody can read into it what they like. The important part is that it shows how delicate democracy is, and how easily it is endangered. This film will make you think, and it will have done its job.
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on April 29, 2024.
