Three years after the Syrian civil war began, in 2014, the nonprofit organization Save the Children launched a 93-second commercial titled “If London Were Syria,” which was incredibly effective in making the battle relatable to those of us in the UK. It showed a little child growing up in London whose contented, typical life is abruptly upended by a made-up civil war in Britain. The advertisement’s intended message was very clear: what if it happened here?
In Civil War, Alex Garland asks that very question with a merciless clarity. For those of us in the West, war is frequently an abstract idea that may be dismissed as something that just occurs to other people in different locations. At a time when actual hostilities are raging all over the world, Garland vividly imagines a war-torn United States in this big-screen cautionary story that transforms familiar peaceful locations like New York, Washington, DC, and a JC Penney parking lot into post-apocalyptic battle zones.
He is not careless. The second American Civil War seems to be well underway at the start of the movie, with front lines extending from sea to shining sea. Suicide bombers wearing the stars and colors, troops dressed in Hawaiian shirts, shelters for refugees inside of shuttered stadiums, and dead dangling from bridges are all there. The nation is on the verge of collapse. It is unsettlingly, painfully real.
This is a stunningly shot movie that will astound and astound you. Hell is war, and it has never looked more beautiful.
Unusually, the reporters covering it are given more attention than the soldiers fighting on the front lines or even the politicians making the decisions. The overzealous cub reporter Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), the seasoned photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst), the inebriated writer Joel (Wagner Moura), and the seasoned Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) are our stand-ins for this tale. Although the tone isn’t as icy as it was in Garland’s earlier movies, Ex Machina or Annihilation (thankfully, there isn’t a sequence where Rory Kinnear keeps giving birth to himself in Men), this movie is still more about its concepts than its characters.
piece by piece, we find out more and more about how things went wrong: under a two-star flag, Texas and California united to form the “Western Forces,” defeating the “Florida Alliance.” Garland purposefully leaves out important facts from his script, making the reasons behind the fight practically irrelevant in light of the conflict itself. These details mostly appear in the background. Garland appears to want to look beyond the typical political binary and consider the larger picture by bringing together Texas and California, two states that are typically on opposing sides of the political spectrum. For those seeking a clear-cut statement about the state of affairs in 2024, this could be seen as a frustrating attempt at compromise, portraying a centrist father in a movie setting.
It isn’t totally apolitical, though. The scenario revolves around Nick Offerman’s fascist President, who uses bellicose rhetoric reminiscent of Donald Trump (“Some are already calling it the greatest victory in the history of mankind,” he says at one point). Seemingly having given himself a third term, he directs airstrikes against his own people. The movie, which was published in a US election year with “democracy on the ballot,” asks what happens when democracy fails and violence steps in to fill the breach, even if it avoids creating direct avatars for current world leaders.
Garland finds it fascinating that journalists are able to maintain objectivity in the face of inhumanity, as well as their stoicism and humanity. Their paths overlap and converge; Lee appears to have lost hers, and Jessie is only now finding hers. Similar to Nightcrawler or Peeping Tom, it is intrigued by the ability of observation can be both destructive and enlightening. How does being a witness to history feel? What is the price of living behind a camera for your soul? Garland seems to be putting us and himself at fault for the inconsistencies.
Fundamentally, though, this is a stunningly crafted movie that is sure to startle and amaze. Hell is war, and it has never looked more beautiful. Rob Hardy’s cinematography, supported by some absurdly well-staged, massive set pieces, blends menacing realism with a delicate, eerie beauty. (The apparent yet alluring symbolism of a shootout on the Lincoln Memorial steps is evident.) It never lets up, always engrossing, always overwhelming your senses, and always eerily captivating. Regardless of how you feel about its political hesitancy, this is unquestionably the best kind of filmmaking—confident, intense, and pale.