Alex Garland has never been a political artist, though politics are often hovering uncomfortably in the background of his films. He prefers the intimacy of immediate experience, but his scripts – both the ones he’s directed and the ones he hasn’t – have the stench of something rotting from the top, as if our characters’ fate are compromised by overarching carelessness. Both in its framing and promotional materials, Civil War feels like Garland’s most explicitly political film, but watching it proves the opposite is true. It has been accused of apoliticism, of obscuring the nuts and bolts of its fracturing America. This is not a both-sides-ing dystopia. Only a fool could watch this and feel unsure of where Garland stands on who is good and who is bad. But that isn’t the story that Civil War is interested in telling.
It starts as a film about journalism. Lee Smith (Kirsten Dusnt) is a world-respected war photographer documenting the conflict between the quickly crumbling United States and the secessionist Western Forces (usually just called the ‘WF’) of Texas and California. By her side is a cowboy journalist named Joel (Wagner Moura) who works for Reuters. The writing appears to be on the wall: the US appears primed for an inevitable defeat, while the president (Nick Offerman) makes empty declarations of power. Currently serving his third term, the vanity of his performance suggests a dictatorial delusion, but a WF triumph still feels far-fetched. Can the dynasty of American empire really be this close to falling? Lee and Joel’s focus is narrow: they want to get to DC and interview the president before the WF gets to him first.
Joining Lee and Joel are a member of the old guard and the new. Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) is a veteran of the New York Times, whose age and health usually prevents him from the kinds of risky trips that Lee and Joel are planning. There’s also Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a twenty-three year old amateur photographer who counts Lee as one of her idols. When Lee narrowly protects Jesse from an explosion, the young photographer decides to cajole her way into the group to DC. Joel isn’t happy about Sammy (he’s old and slow), Lee isn’t happy about Jessie (she’s young and inexperienced), but the quartet proceeds, taking the backroads from New York to DC, hoping to encounter the sequestered president, but guaranteed to see the front line of an already deadly wartime conflict.
The characters here are drawn with broad strokes. Their motivations are simple and their actions predictable. Garland has no interest in spending the time that backstory may require, and he also doesn’t see a way to work it properly into this complicated story. The road-trip-to-Hell conceit recalls Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 masterpiece, Children of Men, but that film had emotional stakes as well as political ones. Garland depends on his cast to fill in the gaps. Dunst is the film’s star, but downplays her performance here. It’s the right choice. Lee is a woman beaten into emotional rigidity by witnessing the atrocities of contemporary history. Her dismissal of Jessie is a poorly-hidden maternal instinct, one that evolves into genuine affection as the story unfolds.
The performances across the board are good. Stephen McKinley Henderson is this decade’s great gentleman character actor, and his Sammy plays a specific role with moments you can anticipate but still appreciate. As the shameless maverick to Dunst’s granite stoicism, Wagner Moura gives Civil War a much needed reckless energy – a reminder that war is perpetuated by adrenaline junkies in all forms. Spaeny, in her first big role since last year’s Priscilla (which won her an acting prize at Venice), does a similar child-to-adult transformation here, and she’s proving skilled at using her overly-youthful appearance to her advantage. But this is Dunst’s film; an actor who’s beginnings as a precocious teen star gave way to a performer of incredible depth. Seeing her open a big budget, high concept film, and elevate the script’s flatness without sacrificing her dignity as an actor, is a pleasure.
The budget is noteworthy considering the film was produced by A24, a PR-savvy film distributor that’s trying to make that pesky leap from indie to mainstream, without losing its cool credibility. Civil War is the first major swing, and while its box office opening ($25.7 million) was remarkable for an R-rated drama in 2024, we’ll have to stop grading A24’s monetary success on a sliding scale. Pegging Garland with this responsibility is the smart move. After all, his directorial debut was 2014’s Ex Machina, a brilliant sci-fi thriller that A24 released in its less ballyhooed days, and his scripts for directors like Danny Boyle show he’s a storyteller with a proper appreciation of scale. There are some remarkable sequences throughout Civil War, and the film’s last hour ripples with an incredible tension, even if this is Garland at his most paint-by-numbers.
The film’s focus on photojournalism and the supremacy of the still image does feel almost dated, especially in a time where all of our iconic images are caught on video – in particular, cell phone recordings. Civil War doesn’t explicitly argue for the purity of photography, but the details on the analog process seem to speak for themselves. This is movie is being marketed as a provocative depiction of our immediate future, where threats of fascism are made real. Garland adds twists to what you may expect, but calling the film apolitical is missing the point. This is not a movie trying to frighten audiences who dread another Trump presidency, but a story about the ways we document our everyday trauma. Garland’s argument – to the degree he has one – is for the importance capturing truth and the degree to which it’s even possible.
Among Civil War‘s sins (including but not limited to scores of soundtrack needle drops that range from the irritatingly didactic to the frankly embarrassing), its worst is probably timing. Anyone who’s managed to see the Oscar-winning documentary 20 Days in Mariupol within six months of this film will find Garland’s film trite and unwise. Mariupol is a movie about the toll of capturing real war time footage, and the nobility of risking your life to send out that truth to the world. That is not what Civil War is trying to say, but the parallels are such that Garland’s film flounders in the comparison. In the end, this movie simply doesn’t feel as substantial as it obviously wants to be. Its observations are not profound, and it doesn’t have the bravery to be the kind of genre schlock it’s begging to be. Garland has threatened retirement during the press cycle for this film, but one hopes he gets another chance to make something whose quality matches his narrative ambition.
Written and Directed by Alex Garland