Civil War ★★

If the pen is mightier than the sword, then I must imagine that the camera trumps both. Civil War, the latest project from director Alex Garland, takes aim at journalism, ethics, war, and the U.S. government in epic form with the accuracy of a shotgun, rather than a sniper rifle. It’s the kind of anti-establishment spirit that hesitates to define which establishment it’s protesting. The script carries this ignorance with a sense of self-awareness where uncertainty characterizes every interaction. At no point are the heroes and villains, or even which fighters are which, clearly outlined for the viewer. Audiences must judge the sides for themselves and attempt to discern right from wrong in a morally ambiguous landscape. The embodiment of this commentary comes at the expense of likable characters and any defining political ideology. The characters depicted serve themselves as the nation falls apart around them, laws and ethical rules lose their value, and the only Bill of Rights amendment that matters is #2. In practice, the film plays like the bleak dystopian road trip in Cuarón’s Children of Men mixed with the dissection of cutthroat journalism practices in Nightcrawler. While the characters’ amorality and hypocritical decisions provide an interesting commentary, the film’s failure to connect with the state of the union today is disappointing.

Civil War follows a group of photojournalists in a future USA as they trek south from New York to D.C. on a mission to interview the dictator president (Nick Offerman). Rookie journalist Jessie (Cailee Spaeny) joins up with industry veteran Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst), one of her idols, to document the war in photos on their journey. Hopes of journalistic fame and glory drive their mission far more than any ethical obligations or professional integrity. The selfishness and delusional mindset of these journalists make them so narrow-minded that they fail to understand the basic terms of the conflict unfolding around them. They don’t allow themselves to process even the most basic of questions of why they photograph certain situations, and who the subjects of each shot even are. Whether the characters realize their motivations or not, they respond to the primal exhilaration felt when putting themselves in the line of danger and relish the potent mixture of feelings created by their work. Any moral dilemmas go unresolved. The answer is not to process the atrocities, rather keep working, push it down, and take a picture of anything that’s bleeding.

The setting places itself in the not-too-distant future where several states have seceded from the United States to lead an uprising against middle America, including the capital in D.C.. Texas and California have bound together as the Western Forces, and Florida has also detached itself from the other states. This strong premise offers great potential for satire about the various cultures and political stereotypes found across different U.S. states, or parody of the always entertaining campaign debates and speeches. Offerman plays a Trump-inspired dictator, serving his illicit third term in office while a destructive war is waged against the rebelling states. And yet, despite the film trailer’s deception, this movie has very little to do with politics. A direction made all the more baffling when considering its release during an election year. With Garland and other key crew members hailing from the UK and Europe, I felt the film to be out of touch with the sociopolitical fault lines in modern U.S. society. The whole presentation lacks specificity; the plot seems to take a much broader stance against glorifying any war through media than anything particular to American news outlets.

Rather than a deep dive into exploring the world presented, as I anticipated that the film would be a social commentary, the silent characterization (primarily through images) sidesteps the investigation of the interesting questions posed by the premise. As a viewer, the film fails to provide a complete sense of what the fictional society struggled with; the journalists drive a van that never runs out of gas, yet the characters worry about fuel scarcity. Further, the U.S. dollar is said to be worthless, relative to other currencies, however, having enough money never poses an issue. Throughout the film, dilapidated storefronts and malls serve as backdrops for scenes, so I failed to understand why money would continue to matter in the first place. With so much post-apocalyptic media available for reference, these oversights feel somewhat amateur, especially given Garland’s solid track record.

To my surprise, the impeccable sound design stood out as the greatest quality of the film. The shooting style brings viewers directly into the action, with a kind of fly-on-the-wall feeling that verges on cinema verite. Combined with this, the crispness and sonic details make for an engaging viewing experience, while the worldbuilding takes a backseat. Something that I would certainly not expect about an indie film like this is that, at its best, Civil War plays like a tense round of Fortnite or Call of Duty. Needless to say in a movie about photojournalism, visuals and atmosphere occupy the foreground, as they have with Garland’s prior films Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Men. I felt the distinctive ecological science fiction/fantasy of those earlier films built a great sense of intrigue and allure within their respective narratives. While most viewers might not consider those prior films as part of the “adventure” genre, the slow-burning mystery and quiet suspense in each of them drew me in instantly. Now, with Civil War, which is explicitly an adventure film, the worldbuilding left me wanting more. The scenery continues in these other films’ tradition featuring settings in forested locales, here throughout the East Coast. As a Virginia native myself, I enjoyed the representation- the film looks undeniably American. Opposed to the futuristic smart home in Ex Machina, or the shimmering, parasitic bubble in Annihilation, the war here destroys its environment and the culture fabric with it. The vast majority of scenes occur outside surrounded by abandoned buildings, vehicle pile-ups, run-down gas stations, and militarized camps. Atop every urban ruin and behind every corner, armed fighters hide, prepared to shoot any unwelcome passerby. Each new location is less welcoming than the last, demonstrating that the death of empathy and human compassion accompanied the fall of society. 

The violence inspires awe, as often filmed through the characters’ camera lens and still images. Such visuals glorify and perpetrate terror and destruction. The narrative calls into question the journalists’ desire to capture the suffering of the war even when they don’t even know what’s happening around them. They whip out cameras to shove in the faces of dying soldiers attempting to capture pure misery and expressions of anguish. Their guiding principle is not integrity but profit; to them, photographing the worst tragedy seemingly equates to the greatest level of success. Their hypocrisy begs viewers to consider why modern news media outlets value images of pain and destruction. Is this even news, or just violence for the sake of sensationalism, designed to create polarizing stories that generate clicks? 

A notable scene features two fighters pinned in a field by a sniper offscreen. The journalists admire them casually and photograph the duo as they hold their breath and wait for the right moment to retaliate against the shooter. One fighter asks the aspiring journalist Jessie what she thinks is happening. She says something literal along the lines of “he is trying to shoot you,” summarizing the full extent of her understanding of the conflict and war as a whole. Such scenes tease greater analysis of real-life problems like the fake news phenomena, AI-generated stories, and deepfake videos which mislead readers and deepen political divides. Yet, Civil War shies away from these topics that would apply the intrigue of these journalistic dilemmas to reality. The dilemma of how to portray violence comes to a head in an explosive conclusion when the journalists tag along on a major raid where the film itself features high-octane action. With such cold-blooded characters, I found it hard to care who lives and dies in the story. Beyond that, the missing historical context, and only vague parallels to the modern day, undercut such insights through a lack of relatability and poignancy. 

Throughout Civil War, jarring contrasts offer moments of both excitement and confusion. For instance, several scenes begin suddenly with loud gunfire. The soundtrack features some awkwardly placed needle drops that neither suit their scenes nor seem to satirize them. Several characters have strange costume flairs, like painted nails and cheap plastic sunglasses. I hope they had fun behind the scenes on this shoot because the message of these details was lost on me. Midway through the film, the journalist crew arrives at a quaint small town that still exists in the dystopian world as it might today, and find themselves shocked at such an anachronism thriving amidst a war-torn nation. After a conversation with the clerk at a fashion boutique, they understand that some people have simply chosen to ignore the whole war business. In their tunnel vision, the journalists cannot fathom how a community could disregard the destruction, as though the whole world ought to freeze when conflict breaks out. Unsurprisingly, the townspeople find themselves satisfied in their disengagement, versus the journalists who never get a full night’s sleep and deliberately seek out danger. In their way, the protagonists detach themselves from the realities of war in equal measure. They see themselves as documentarians, not actual fighters carrying weapons and perpetrating violence. The mental distancing allows them to lose sight of the value of human life. When other people are shot it’s beautiful, striking, gripping fodder for the news outlets. But when their peers are killed, they are devastated by the inhumanity and tragedy. Similarly, an early scene showcases that this future American society grants the institution of the press immunity from the dangers of the political violence happening all around them. This allows the journalists’ egos to inflate, as they proudly tout their “press” badges when entering into life-threatening situations on a pedestal as casual observers.  

With all the rich material here, Civil War provides more food for thought than the story addresses. If there are parallels here to today’s conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, then I fail to understand them. Civil War insists upon ambiguity, which admittedly serves the script about the societal confusion and distress felt during wartime, but left me frustrated and dissatisfied nonetheless. On account of the open-ended themes, I am tentative to ascribe any particular interpretation to what the film intended to communicate about what lies in store for the future of America. As a Michael Bay-style action film featuring the obliteration of America, Civil War provides ample entertainment and is a technical spectacle to behold. As a mid-budget indie satire of American politics through a dystopian lens, I left the theater wanting more.