Civil War
Alex Garland brings the dystopian thriller to America’s backyard in a shell-shocking and topical slice of cinema.
War, what is it good for? : Kirsten Dunst
Courtesy of A24
War is insane but the currency of it has become almost mundane. Every day we see pictures of urban detritus, shattered communities in Gaza and Ukraine, for most of us worlds far removed from our own. What is so chilling about Alex Garland’s war film is that it brings the conflict to a familiar landscape, to the streets, interstates and shopping malls of cinematic familiarity now scarred by the spectre of battle. And with the good ol’ US of A increasingly divided by the upcoming elections, it is beginning to feel all too possible. The storming of the Capitol on 6 January, 2021, was not a Hollywood recreation.
The writer-director Alex Garland makes many smart choices. He casts Kirsten Dunst in the central role of the battle-hardened war correspondent Lee Smith, who knows the risks and rules of her trade, even though this conflict is entirely more personal. The country is divided between an embattled government and militant forces from California and Texas, cleaving the North-East from the South-West. Now, the very infrastructure is failing – access to the Internet, electricity: utilities we have taken for granted.
Then there’s the 23-year-old Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny), the emotional opposite to Lee’s cynical warhorse, an ambitious innocent through whose eyes we witness the horrors to come. There’s Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson), too, hanging on to the coattails of The New York Times, a veteran who now needs a stick to walk but doesn’t know what else to do with his life. And there’s Joel (Wagner Moura), the professional foot soldier of journalism with room for a certain gallows humour and the experience to know when a spliff might be necessary – but he’s human, too.
Alex Garland, who previously directed the compellingly intelligent sci-fi drama Ex Machina (2014), has taken another futuristic scenario and made it even more terribly real. This is not the dystopian thrill ride of many a Hollywood action-thriller, but a drama that treats the gravity of war with the realism it merits. Garland knows the facility of the facial close-up, where we are permitted to peer into the human depth of the story that he is telling. There has been a multitude of horror films of late, but the jump scares in Civil War arrive without logic or warning, as sudden and arbitrary as they are in any military confrontation.
Any way you cut it, Civil War is an astonishing piece of accomplished cinema, from its assured, low-key opening to its finale. Once again, the director has elicited peerless performances from his actors (they’re all brilliant), while wielding Glenn Freemantle’s sound design like an emotional truncheon. The soundtrack (including two songs from the synth-punk band Suicide) feels as instantly iconic as Apocalypse Now, while Rob Hardy’s evocative, kinetic cinematography reflects the stark imagery captured by Lee and Jessie. One sometimes forgets how genuinely powerful – and disturbing – cinema can be, but with the right director, characters and scenario, it is an art form that can still have a jolting, transformative effect.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sonoya Mizuno, Jefferson White, Nelson Lee, Evan Lai, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons.
Dir Alex Garland, Pro Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich and Gregory Goodman, Screenplay Alex Garland, Ph Rob Hardy, Pro Des Caty Maxey, Ed Jake Roberts, Music Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow, Costumes Meghan Kasperlik, Sound Glenn Freemantle, Dialect coach Jamison Bryant.
DNA Films/IPR.VC-A24/Entertainment Film Dists.
108 mins. USA/UK. 2023. UK and US Rel: 12 April 2024. Cert. 15.
