Civ­il War review – sound with­out the fury

War nev­er changes – at least accord­ing to the pro­logue of Bethesda’s Fall­out video game series, set in the after­math of a nuclear apoc­a­lypse in an alter­nate ver­sion of the Unit­ed States. The wild­ly suc­cess­ful fran­chise has spawned five con­sole games and – as of this month – a glossy Ama­zon dra­ma series, explor­ing a real­i­ty where war­ring fac­tions eke out a fraught exis­tence across the back­ground of almost total anni­hi­la­tion. This approach is what we have come to expect from imag­ined depic­tions of West­ern war­fare, and the series’ three-word tagline implies that despite Fallout’s more fan­tas­ti­cal ele­ments (strange crea­tures, cos­tumed fight­ers, sen­tient robots) con­flict is the only constant.

The same sen­ti­ment could apply to Alex Garland’s Civ­il War, set in a North Amer­i­ca of the near future, where ide­o­log­i­cal war­fare erupt­ing from a pres­i­den­tial insur­rec­tion has torn the Unit­ed States into sev­er­al camps: the West­ern Forces, lead by Cal­i­for­nia and Texas; the Flori­da Alliance con­sist­ing of a hand­ful of south­ern states; the New Peo­ples’ Army to the north-west, and the Loy­al­ist Forces. Drop­ping us into the action dur­ing the war’s dying days, we learn pre­cious lit­tle about the gen­e­sis of the con­flict and what it is that each of the fac­tions rep­re­sents. There are snip­pets of con­text offered, but Gar­land (by his own admis­sion) is not par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in the polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of his story.

Instead Garland’s pri­ma­ry con­cern is depict­ing the expe­ri­ences of a quar­tet of war cor­re­spon­dents, who set out from New York City to Wash­ing­ton D.C, with the inten­tion of secur­ing an exclu­sive inter­view with the despot pres­i­dent (Nick Offer­man, point­ed­ly Trumpian with­out it becom­ing a dis­trac­tion) in the war’s dying days. It’s the scoop of the cen­tu­ry. Fame and glo­ry await who­ev­er can con­vince the pres­i­dent to go on record. This appeals more to viva­cious reporter Joel (Wag­n­er Mourou) than his tac­i­turn pho­to­jour­nal­ist part­ner Lee (Kirsten Dun­st), who con­ceals her world-weary gaze behind the lens of her cam­era. The pair agree to give a lift to their friend and men­tor Sam­my (Stephen McKin­ley Hen­der­son on fine form) who’s keen to get to the heart of the fight­ing in Char­lottesville (of course), and are joined – reluc­tant­ly, in Lee’s case – by cub pho­tog­ra­ph­er Jessie (Cailee Spae­ny) who idolis­es Lee and wants a chance to prove her metal.

It’s a road movie as much as it’s a war movie, with the group pil­ing into a press van and nav­i­gat­ing the des­o­late high­ways of the north­east as they pick their way towards the White House. Although there’s no con­crete time­line of events to guide us in estab­lish­ing how long the way has been rag­ing, snip­pets of infor­ma­tion reveal a num­ber of cities have become no-go areas, so the par­ty keep to the back­roads, imbued with their own ten­sions and threats. As mem­bers of the press, it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter to the group who’s fight­ing who – just that they are allowed to bear wit­ness. Their pres­ence has a mixed response; some are indif­fer­ent, some are wel­com­ing, and some are hos­tile. Deter­min­ing one from the oth­er isn’t straight­for­ward, and the only true alle­giance that exists is the one between the four peo­ple in their car.

The point that Gar­land is mak­ing is that when you’ve got a gun aimed at you, it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter which side the per­son hold­ing it is on. He has spo­ken of his desire to make an anti-war film that cuts across the polit­i­cal divide, and the use of archive footage record­ed by right-wing pun­dit Andy Ngo cer­tain­ly rais­es an eye­brow. Giv­en the speci­fici­ties of polit­i­cal ten­sions with­in Amer­i­ca, this refusal to real­ly dig into the machin­ery comes across as cow­ard­ly. To ges­ture at the frac­tures that put Don­ald Trump in the White House once (and pos­si­bly for a sec­ond time come Novem­ber) but pull your punch­es in the name of ​“fair­ness” val­i­dates the racist, misog­y­nis­tic ide­al­o­gy which saw ter­ror­ists storm the capi­tol and dis­man­tled Roe v Wade. It is the same weak-stom­ached mid­dle ground which sees the British and Amer­i­can gov­ern­ments refuse to con­demn the geno­cide of Pales­tini­ans because it is not in their polit­i­cal inter­ests. There is no cre­at­ing a dia­logue with a fascist.

And yet, despite its myopic pol­i­tics, it’s hard to deny that Civ­il War is an engross­ing film. The per­for­mances giv­en by the cen­tral cast are quite remark­able, with Moura and Dun­st oper­at­ing as foils and McKin­ley Hen­der­son pro­vid­ing his char­ac­ter­is­tic brand of steely grav­i­tas (he also deliv­ers one of the film’s best moments). Rel­a­tive new­com­er Spae­ny adds to her already impres­sive CV as a chip­per rook­ie whose eyes are opened in dev­as­tat­ing fash­ion, and the kin­ship that forms between her and the more famil­iar trio cre­ates an engag­ing found-fam­i­ly dynam­ic. For the always excel­lent Dun­st, it’s anoth­er feath­er in her cap after her heart­break­ing turn in Jane Campion’s The Pow­er of the Dog. While Lee’s exhaus­tion seems bone-deep, born out of ruth­less ambi­tion and prac­ti­cal­i­ty, Joel’s man­ic charis­ma belies a des­per­a­tion to find pur­pose in a time of sense­less violence.

As a film about the expe­ri­ence of liv­ing through a war and par­tic­u­lar­ly war jour­nal­ism, then, Civ­il War is much more suc­cess­ful. Its action scenes are ear­split­ting and sharply vio­lent, shot with­out the slow motion and strings of more poet­ic war films. There’s a sense of car­nage and chaos, and to hear peo­ple talk so dis­af­fect­ed­ly about death high­lights a per­va­sive col­lec­tive glib­ness that many of us have felt since the dawn of the mil­len­ni­um, but there are still a few moments of such overt cru­el­ty the film main­tains its abil­i­ty to shock.

Garland’s aim, to make a film high­light­ing that Amer­i­ca is tear­ing itself apart, is a noble, if not naïve, one. But when every moment of abject vio­lence seems to be direct­ed at a non-white char­ac­ter, it’s impos­si­ble to tell if he is try­ing to make a point about who suf­fers the most dur­ing con­flicts, or if this is a blind spot as a white film­mak­er. His reluc­tance to ascribe any pol­i­tics to the film sug­gests the lat­ter, which is dis­ap­point­ing because Civ­il War per­haps had the poten­tial to be a much angri­er and more con­fronting film (for both sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum). Per­haps war nev­er changes, in the sense that humans seem des­tined to con­tin­u­al­ly find new and cre­ative ways to tear our­selves apart with the most vul­ner­a­ble at the front of the fir­ing line, but an attempt to make an apo­lit­i­cal Amer­i­can war film is in itself a polit­i­cal state­ment (par­tic­u­lar­ly from a British film­mak­er). For all the impres­sive per­for­mances and spec­ta­cle of Civ­il War, that’s all it can real­ly be in its mealy-mouthed, dither­ing con­cep­tion: an impres­sive­ly mount­ed spec­ta­cle. A diver­sion from the fact that we’re way past find­ing com­mon ground anymore.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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