Civil War

Civil War is not the film you think it is. The trailers. The initial, enigmatic descriptions. The title. It all infers an analysis of America as a divided nation, one where the risk of a second great conflagration seems all too imminent.

But writer/director Alex Garland is not interested in red states versus blue states, as shown by the fact that the rebellion is being led by the unified forces of Texas and California. Whatever it is that the president (Offerman) has done, it’s so egregious, so horrifying, that even traditional antagonists are bound together in a new race to Berlin. That’s the term bandied around by journalists in a New York hotel. But it could not be New York. It could be Saigon in ’75, Jakarta in ’65, Belgrade in ’91. It’s anywhere that reporters gather and drink and wait for their next assignment, and the next assignment for battle-numbed photographer Lee (Dunst) and adrenaline junkie writer Joel (Moura) is to get the last interview with the president in his bunker before he’s extracted and executed for treason.

Garland’s selection of these disunited states has nothing to do with our current political divide. If anything, picking such unlikely bedfellows as the Lone Star and Golden states as insurrectionists is a clear warning to audiences not to get caught up in extraneous details. It’s merely a familiar context, to add immediacy to a global experience. There’s an especially chilling scene with a cameoing Plemons that seems drawn straight from stories of war bands roaming Serbia or Mogadishu’s militias, committing atrocities for atrocity’s sake. It can, indeed, happen here.

These are horrors to which Lee and Joel do not simply bear witness. They chase them, question them, record them, then send their experiences back to readers away from the front line. Garland is telling the story of war correspondents – a rare, fucked up breed who run towards gunfire and get quotes in the middle of smoking craters. It’s an oddly alluring calling for those that romanticize it, like Jessie (Spaeny), a talented young photographer who idolizes Lee and worms her way into their car bound for besieged D.C. She’s confined to the back seat by Lee with grizzled old war zone vet Sammy (the perpetually excellent Henderson) as they head to the fall of the White House.

Garland’s masterful and shocking script is counterbalanced with his quiet, mannered direction. This may be his most restrained and introspective work since his razor-edged and gossamer-delicate script for 2010’s Never Let Me Go, but that’s not sitting at odds with the material. Instead, it’s in tension with it, revealing the convoluted motivations that draw war zone journalists into the fray, and the damage that life inflicts. This may be the closest we’ll ever get to a film version of My War Has Gone, I Miss It So, the harrowing autobiography/front line reportage by The Times’ reporter Anthony Loyd. Garland’s script examines the sense of detachment that is necessary, the situational awareness of running through a firefight with the aim of getting the shot rather than taking the shot, and the dedication to presenting the unavoidable, grisly, shocking truth.

The conflict itself is constantly harrowing, whether it be tank battles in the streets, melees across abandoned apartment complexes, or navigating sniper alley. But nothing is as harrowing as seeing the fracturing hardness in Lee’s eyes. Dunst doesn’t round Lee out but hollows her out, interlocking with Moura’s portrayal of Joel as exploding with manic enthusiasm. But for both, those defining character aspects are survival mechanisms to get the necessary job done. Garland’s script is not just a warning about the ease in which an armed society slips into violence, but a love letter to journalism.