While not directly about the scenario of the effects of a second Trump term, the parallels are impossible to dismiss. The opening scene has the despot preparing a broadcast speech in which he tries out a number of superlatives to describe his blowhard rhetoric. Outside of that, though, the film is vague enough for events shown and referenced to have an even handed tone. When someone describes the Antifa Massacre, it's as natural a part of the conversation that it needs no explanation: we don't know if Antifa massacred or were massacred.
Some combatants are in civvies, others in uniform. There is an anti-government military called the Western Forces as well as the old regular army. Both sides are well equipped, drive the same kind of tanks and wear camo and Kevlar. One pair of uniformed soldiers explain that their situation has been reduced to kill or be killed, whichever side they or their antagonist is on. Another pair in uniform are found mopping up after an atrocity and really could be from either side as they themselves are reduced to expressing the power of armed combatants as givers and takers of human life.
In a design coup, the Western Forces flag is the stars and stripes but there are only two stars. It is the very kind of cultural shock that the great sci-fi dystopia cinema of the '70s would use to freeze viewer comfort with something wrong but very plausible. If not quite seeing the apes riding horses and cracking whips in Planet of the Apes it's close to the corporate anthem being played in Rollerball. Writer/director Alex Garland has been here before in 28 Days Later, Annihilation, Ex Machina and Men, weaving the familiar with the confronting to feed his audience's imagination. I would imagine this film is an uncomfortable watch for Americans.
While the theme is grim and constant and the sense of unease is set at a unending pulse, Garland has packed it up in the familiar genre of the road movie. This means dialogue and personal change are on the menu and Kirstin Dunst's hard-arsed photojournalist must find a way out of her stress at the potential disasters in the car in the shape of the old man and the young woman who might not only endanger everyone's lives but destroy the entire mission. Wagner Moura's rockstar approach to his profession recalls the depictions of Sean Flynn and Tim Page from Dispatches. Cailee Spaeny lets her character's enthusiasm collide with the realities of what she's got herself into. Stephen McKinley Henderson provides great gravitas. Beyond them is a Gulliver's Travels or Heart of Darkness of a cast who work to provide a quilt of foreseeable true life horror.
If Civil War falters anywhere it is in its length. At 1.49 it isn't outrageously long but there is so much repetition of military action and some individual scenes of it feel interminable that we are in danger of losing sight of our central quartet. I can understand a desire to convey the fatiguing grind of a mounted assault or a sniper baiting but too often we live through scenes that have long made their points. I could easily imagine that a cut of about 30 minutes would not be noticed.
But Civil War is not just about its points (to varying degrees of subtlety) but the flow of the experiences we are following. It's Brecht's proposition: don't make me ask what I would do if I were him or her, make me wonder if I would act the same under the circumstances. Garland's vision of a torn nation is offered as a sobering choice to world audiences, what would we do if it came to this? One scene depicts a community apparently completely untouched by the devastation. It bears a heavy eeriness similar to the sight of Manhattan streets without traffic or the shattered amusement park. As we recognise this vision with relief before seeing its price, we might wonder how we are still the way we are. I'll finish with a quote from John Webster because I don't do that enough: Say, 'tis well, security some men call the suburbs of hell, only a dead wall between.
Civil War is on general release.
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