Couple of nights ago: Civil War (Garland, 2024)
In an alternate reality, civil war has been raging in the US for an unspecified amount of time, and the allied Western Forces of Texas and California are closing in on D.C. where the three-term President (Nick Offerman) is hunkered down, issuing increasingly deluded addresses about winning the war, even as the secessionists converge upon Washington. Long declared enemies of the people, the free press are frequently shot on sight in the nation’s capital and, as an intended consequence, the President hasn’t been interviewed or called to account in years. However, with the end approaching for him, a veteran duo for Reuters - journalist Joel (Wagner Moura) and lauded war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) intend to take a long, looping route west from New York around the impassable Pennsylvania and then into DC from the south through the Virginia’s in order to do just that: Get some sort of final word from the President, on how it all came to this.
Along with them on this journey goes Sammy (Stephen McKinley), an aged and overweight but deeply experienced journalist for “what remains of the New York Times”, and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), a naive aspiring photojournalist from the farmlands of Missouri, largely untouched by the horrors of the war.
With our little team in place and their destination clear, so begins an episodic road movie documenting their increasingly surreal and life-threatening experience as they race to reach the White House and the President before the Western Forces who will surely execute him on sight. Along the way they will encounter boorish militias proudly showing off their captives like hunting trophies, pinned-down snipers duelling without knowing who their opponent is, loyalist soldiers being executed, and worse (that coming courtesy of Ms Dunst’s real-life husband Jesse Plemons with another terrifying and unhinged maniac to add to his already impressive repertoire).
So is Civil War a cautionary tale for a nation currently perilously close to the edge of a reckoning? Well, yes and no. It’s impossible to look at scenes of the United States of America as a smoking, burning war zone and not think about the violent rhetoric being used by Trump and his acolytes, and wonder how close we might be to seeing these scenes on the news instead of at the cinema. At the same time, whilst our protagonists are faced with the consequences of the war, the war itself - its cause, its beginnings, its why’s and wherefores - are very much in the background. Writer/director Alex Garland remains largely vague about exactly who are the “good” guys and who are the “bad”, beyond some insinuation that the incumbent President is an authoritarian who may have earned what he has wrought; and of course it’s no coincidence that he’s put the states of Texas and California in tandem rather than in stark opposition, to head off any idea that the circumstances surrounding his war might be couched in current realities.
But it’s really less about the war itself and more about the effect it’s having on those living within the war, particularly our quartet of intrepid and dedicated reporters. Is their journalistic integrity better served by documenting everything at any cost, or at some point do they - and we - need to pick a side?
Civil War is slower and more thoughtful than I thought it was going to be going in but, whilst there are plenty of contemplative sojourns, the movie is too tense and taut to ever feel slow. With a cast on top form and a cracking soundtrack utilising Silver Apples, Suicide and De La Soul to equally brilliant and disconcerting effect, this is an easy - if powerful and sometimes troubling - movie to recommend.
