A Note From Author:
This review of Alex Garland’s Civil War was supposed to be uploaded to my school news site, The Statesman. [Here’s my profile, by the way.] However, presumably due to the lax summer schedule, it’ll be posted here—with several modifications. If The Statesman publishes the review, I’m taking this down.
Continuing Alex Garland’s trend of titling his films with heavy-handed, overarchingly vague words, Civil War was advertised as an apolitical film with a fresh take on contemporary American political division. But does it work? That question has overwhelmed discourse about the movie since its very conception. And now that I’ve seen the film, yes. Civil War has something to say. However, the potency of its message comes from its explorations of journalism, while its commentary on the state of modern America is pushed to the wayside.
Set in the final days of a near-future American civil war, an up-and-coming photojournalist, Jessie, played by Cailee Spaeny, joins an ensemble of established frontline journalists, which includes the likes of Lee Smith, Joel, and Sammy, played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Stephen McKinley Henderson, respectively. Together, the group takes the increasingly dangerous journey from New York City to Washington, D.C., to interview and photograph the fascist, Donald Trump-adjacent president before his inevitable death.
Since these journalists are exclusively Civil War’s frame of reference, not to mention the subtextual influence of Garland’s father being a political cartoonist, many dissenters have claimed the film functions as nothing more than a one-dimensional glorification of journalism. Even Garland said to The Guardian how “There is something in [Civil War] which is trying to be protective of [journalists] … I think serious journalism needs protecting because it’s under attack, so I wanted to make those people ‘heroes’ to put them front and [center].” But while watching the film, I couldn’t help but come to a radically different conclusion—which is in line with Garland and his knack for writing characters who obfuscate principles of morality.
To be clear, Civil War is not the first film to comment on war journalism; the 1980s saw a plethora of movies tackling a similar subject matter. The most notable example would be Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), which not only goes full-blown satire against the concept of combat journalism but war as a whole. That stance is most glaringly apparent through its genuinely hellish final act or the little details, such as the sign that says, “We Will Defend To The Death Our Right To Be Misinformed.”
But unlike Kubrick, Garland’s critique of journalism focuses more on deconstructing its fundamental principles. This moral dilemma is made most explicit by Jessie’s first photograph: a black-and-white image of Lee taking pictures of dead and debilitated bodies in the aftermath of a suicide bombing in New York City. Just from the provocative nature of the photo, a few questions arise: Is this exploitation? Can photojournalists, and journalists in general, ever truly be bystanders?
By the end, the answer crystallizes: No, objectivity and impartiality in journalism are impossible to achieve. There’s no “neutrality” in these journalist’s photographs when they’re embedded within dozens of combatants infiltrating the White House; the moment they point the camera toward something, whether it’s the remnants of dead civilians, an exploding building, or a dead president, the journalists are making a statement. That thematic sentiment bleeds into film as a medium; plenty of films have tackled cinematic objectivity and subjectivity—with Justine Triet’s legal drama Anatomy of a Fall (2023) coming to mind—but few, if any, have ever used a backdrop as apocalyptic as Civil War.
Even compared to his previous works like Ex Machina (2015) or Annihilation (2018), one can argue that Civil War is Garland at his most nihilistic. The film treats the endeavor of photojournalism as a helpless task, unable to alter the events unfolding in this fictionalized America, as the audience is given a front-row seat to the country’s darkest moments.
This is exemplified through Jessie, who becomes the film’s central focus. She doubles as a younger Lee Smith who was also dipping her toes into combat journalism without comprehending its consequences and mental taxation. Akin to Lee, who earned her breakthrough with her efforts during the “Antifa Massacre,” Jessie gets her “Kodak moment” by photographing the president’s execution in the West Wing. However, her happy ending comes at the complete expense of Lee, who attempts to shield a vulnerable Jessie from the film’s climactic West Wing crossfire. And for what cause exactly? So Jessie can perpetuate the cycle of chasing an endless spectacle? Talk about being bleak.
But some of you might rightfully be asking: Isn’t the film’s critiques of journalism almost an inadvertent self-critique of the film itself? How can a movie that examines with unadulterated audiovisual bombast the subjectivity and partiality of journalism also operate as an “apolitical” thriller about a contemporary American civil war? To put it bluntly, it can’t.
So, what does Civil War say about modern America? That it’s divided? Sure, but that’s not a revelatory observation. That’s the equivalent of saying the sky is blue. Since the audience is thrust into the final days of the conflict, not much screen time or exposition is devoted to understanding the goals and politics of the country’s remaining factions. At most, we get political caricatures; the president is a Trump-esque figure, while the detour into Jesse Plemons’ loyalist death squad represents white nationalism as we get off-hand references to Antifa and the Portland Maoists.
The war has continued for so long that it is no longer a war about political causes, but a war about fighting for one’s survival. The latter strikes as an interesting commentary—that, at a certain point, the politics of it all no longer matter. But since the audience is given such a limited outlook of the ideological cleavages that sparked this ensuing violence, the movie remains too simplistic and shapeless in its anti-war text.
How can Garland and Civil War spark the urge for change and political discourse when Garland and the movie are too cowardly to dive into the political undercurrents causing this ripple effect of mass polarization? How can this movie take digs at small-town Americans for staying out of the conflict while effectively doing the same thing? How can this movie have a preliminary thesis that “at a certain point, the politics of it all don’t matter” while making blanket political statements about democracy and dictatorships?
I’m not looking for political affirmation; there’s also cowardice to watching a movie called Civil War to have your political stances validated. But I’m also not looking for tonal inconsistencies and contradictions. The film could have given us politically nuanced world-building—the wants and needs, the concurrences and disagreements between all the American factions—and fleshed-out, humanized characters, and, in turn, the façade of an “apolitical” perspective this film tries accomplishing would’ve remained mostly intact.
Ultimately, Civil War is a movie that half works, half doesn’t. It’s both bold and spineless, provocative and neutered. Maybe those limitations stem from its sky-high ambitions as a faux-blockbuster spectacle, which actively conflicts with its relatively small $50 million budget. Maybe the point-of-view and setting of the film actively handicap its world-building. Whatever it is, it’s a movie that fascinates me for all the wrong reasons.
The Sideline Discourse 