‘Civil War’ Review: “A Lazy Embodiment of America”
It pains me when I see people I care for follow down paths of conspiracy and start to have disdain for reality. Disdain is a strong, vitriolic emotion that has been a leading dividing factor in our country since its conception. If a modern American civil war were to break out it wouldn’t surprise me in the least given how much disdain is spewed across our country. But how would that look exactly? Luckily for the viewer, Alex Garland’s most recent film, Civil War, embodies what is wrong with America. The downside, however, is that Civil War does not embody America by capturing any particular feeling or idea. It embodies America in how contemptuous and smug it is.
A discussion most American people could have regarding a hot-button topic tends to be full of hollow logic, inherent bias, and empty platitudes. For example, any “dialogue” that Fox News attempts to deliver has nothing but empty comparisons and fear-mongering. Weirdly enough, the approach Civil War has with its ideas is a facsimile of the Fox News approach. It’s surface level, emotionally manipulative, and contrived. There is a much better build to these ideas and even settling into an apolitical lens could work if only those ideas did not fall by the wayside.
American people are heavily flawed and mostly culturally inept individuals (especially caucasian people). If Civil War had been more about Garland’s contempt for the typical American person that would’ve been more interesting than what it’s actually about. The film follows four journalists in a war-savaged America going after the story of a lifetime: interviewing the man who created the havoc in the first place – the President of the United States. These journalists consist of the icy and hardened Lee (Kirsten Dunst), the thrill-seeking Joel (Wagner Moura), the wise and respectful Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), and the fresh-to-the-scene Jesse (Cailee Spaeny). The fact it centers on journalists is a sign that Garland has no interest in framing this from an average Joe’s perspective.
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Garland insists on touching on difficult and loaded topics, but he never says anything about them other than that they exist. Not to say he should have to speak on politically charged topics. Regardless, it seems unreasonable to cover a movie so loaded with political intent and do nothing with it. For example, there’s a scene where an apathetic business owner wishes to stay removed from the overall conflict. The irony is that this criticism is levied against corporations, but Garland is doing the exact same thing!
The most frustrating part is that the visual direction from Garland is superb. With his earlier works, Garland had a creative eye even when the screenplay didn’t come together. I found the ideas of Men to be repulsive, but I could at least find some value from the body horror. With Civil War, the movie looks incredible, but the imagery adds nothing to the shallow ideas at play.
I wouldn’t say any particular actor didn’t deliver on the acting front, but the way they were written was flat and contrived. Each character acted out of progressing the story rather than having their own sense of agency. Sammy could have been much more impactful. However, he was delegated to saying sappy, sentimental one-liners to rebut whatever edgy thing Lee had said.
Civil War would have benefitted from a longer form. Many ideas rear their heads briefly but act as a sort of “whack-a-mole” of issues plaguing American society. Who are the people that we are following? Why is there a civil war happening? How do these factions function in this version of America? There are a lot of ideas that could have garnered a stronger impression if we were given more insight into the world. I know Garland is capable of delivering something dense and affecting, but you would have fooled me if I had only seen Civil War.
There is an attempt to do a Come and See style movie under the lens of journalism, but never goes beyond “journalists can be under fire during wartime”. In fact, Garland said in an interview with Letterboxd that he made the cast watch Come and See to prepare for this movie. In all fairness, the way the movie moves IS similar to Come and See. However, Civil War feels contrived and empty while Come and See is dense with anti-war messaging and anti-Nazism. Interestingly, Garland had attempted anti-war messaging before with his screenplay for 28 Days Later to much greater success.
Civil War‘s greatest flaw is its inability to develop anything. Any interesting or intriguing idea is undercut by superficial, hamfisted nonsense. There is nothing human about this, the action is bland and uninspiring, and worst of all it has absolutely nothing to say. I don’t get value in berating movies. However, this project feels desperate to get a rise out of people and instead invoked the wrong kind of rise out of me. Civil War is as if Alex Garland came into your living room, pissed on your rug, and expected thanks for it. – Jacob Mauceri
Rating: 2/10