Civil War – Review
The much anticipated — and controversy-stirring — film from writer/director Alex Garland. I know that I, based on the limited information I had going in, was a bit concerned about what Civil War was actually going to be.
**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below, then use the links to listen or watch as he and Ryan discuss the movie in-depth in an episode that includes a chat about Monkey Man. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
109 Minutes, Rated R
Written and Directed by Alex Garland
Synopsis:
A journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.
I needn’t have been too concerned about this one, however. Alex Garland had said previous to release that he went out of his way to make the film NOT an apples to apples comparison of America’s current social/political unrest. That’s a good thing, because we see enough of that garbage on the news every day.
Instead, we get a look at an America that might be, one in which unexpected alliances are forged (Texas and California… together?) and the constitutional norms of today have already been dispensed with: the President, played by Nick Offerman, is already in his THIRD term, which means the constitution has been changed to allow that in the first place.
Regardless, Garland’s America is vaguely defined, it’s various factions are simply named, with no explanation of their ideology (with the hilarious — yes, I said HILARIOUS — exception of the Portland Maoists, which tells you all you need to know). The one definitive piece of information we get which could be tied to today is presented in such an ambiguous way that it could mean two things, depending on which POV the viewer chooses to ascribe to it: our main character’s earliest claim to fame is that she took a defining photo of “the Antifa massacre.”
Were Antifa forces massacred or did they commit a massacre? This ambiguity about a familiar player is as close to a definitive statement about “today” as Garland gives us.
Yes, there are identifiable archetypes and stereotypes throughout the film, and you will recognize them all, but the film follows a band of journalists as they attempt to navigate through the conflicts to reach the president before he is taken and/or killed.
Through the unbiased eyes of these journalists, intent only on reporting what they see (perhaps the single piece of true fiction in the film at this point in America, where nary a news broadcast is not accompanied by a bit of opining on “what it means.”), we see the results of WHAT the war has wrought: the WHY is irrelevant at this point. Garland’s America is past the WHY, and is now desperately flailing to reach “what’s next?”
I hope that people will watch the movie before offering assessments of it. Is it disturbing? Yes. Is it prophetic? Perhaps, if people take it as the warning the film explicitly offers instead of hauling their own notions into the theater and imposing them on the film.
Some people will see what they want to see in Civil War, and that’s a shame. Watch the film for what it is, not for what you think it’s going to be or what you want it to be. Allow Civil War to show you what it is.
It’s not what you think.
But that doesn’t make it any less important.
Civil War hits theaters April 12 and stars Nick Offerman, Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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