Civil War (2024 Film)

It’s been a year since Alex Garland’s Civil War came out. I was very excited to see it, but I missed the theatrical window and then had to really ask myself when I was going to be in the right headspace to see an HD depiction of second American Civil War.

The answer: a Saturday that I had a lot of free time and a pint of Cherry Garcia.

Alex Garland is a very gifted writer and filmmaker: He wrote the original 28 Days Later, wrote and directed the adaptation of Annihilation, and he wrote and directed his own original concept, Ex Machina, which is one of the best AI films of all time. He’s also English. Which does matter when you’re making a film about the fall of the United States of America.

Civl War imagines a not-so distant future in which Texas and California have seceded (TOGETHER), “loyalist” states siding with an incompetent third-term president who has begun drone striking his own citizens, a Florida Alliance, and the New People’s army in the Northwest. Almost all of that is in the background, though. The film follows a group of war journalists on the way to the final siege of Washington D.C.

I think that’s probably for the best, honestly. While I’d love to read a good book imagining the geopolitical realities of the U.S. breaking down (although I’d need at least a quart of Tillamook ice cream for that one), I don’t know that an English writer and director is the right person to make incisive commentary on the subject.

So, if the film isn’t about the politics or the military campaign, what is Civil War about? On one level, it’s about cultural memory. By focusing on photographers, the film zeroes in on images that evoke other historical atrocities, from Abu Ghraib to the Holocaust.

On another level, it’s about desensitization to violence. It’s haunting how many people in this movie either get genuinely excited by or barely seem emotionally involved in the death around them. It’s the whole film builds around the rare moments when the characters deal with the horrors around them.

I understand that there have been several criticisms of the film. Partly that has to be down to the fact that this film could have gone several different ways: summer blockbuster about brave soldiers overthrowing an autocrat, art-house darling that’s almost all about interiority and the distant shadow of the war, horror film about the people who end up at the mercy of soldiers gleefully throwing away their humanity. Someone was always going to be disappointed by the premise it landed on.

Also, I think there are some reductionist slams that the movie just beats the audience over the head with the message IT COULD HAPPEN HERE!!!!!!!! without directly engaging in the recent politics that have made a civil war feel like a genuine possibility.

But there’s a moment in the middle of the film that I think really encapsulates a key question the film addresses, and I don’t know if the film has an answer for us.

While talking to a fellow reporter, Kirsten Dunst’s Lee Miller veteran journalist of conflicts all around the world, says, “Every time I made it out of a war zone and got the photo, I thought I was sending a warning home. ‘Don’t do this.’ Yet here we are.”

And that, to me, is a lot more nuanced than IT COULD HAPPEN HERE. It asks journalists what the point of war reporting is when the audience refuses to care about the human toll of battle. And more broadly it asks anyone who has tried to make the world a more reasonable, peaceful place to confront the fact that eventually, they will likely fail. What is the point, when certain people will gleefully lead their nations into hell?

I think Miller finds an answer by the end, but even then, I couldn’t tell you for sure what it is or if it’s of genuine comfort. But it’s a hell of a ride.

Streaming now on Max.