







Civil War (2024) Dream Baby Dream 🇺🇸
I remember when the trailer came out. I was die hard Alex Garland fan and hearing about the premise, and seeing a poster of soldiers in the torch of the statue of liberty had me intrigued. When the trailer came out, it felt like a shot of adrenaline, and I used my lunch break to watch it in a cold sweat. The trailer featured DC as a warzone, barely three years after the January 6 Insurrection. Garland was releasing a movie called “Civil War” in a politically polarized nation, in an Election YEAR!!! I had to see it. I saw it. I worked at a college and had a conversation with a student who brought up the film. He was disappointed in it because it didn’t give him the exposition and the hardcore action that he wanted. I argued that it also didn’t get me the exposition that I wanted, but it didn’t matter. And I think it’s Garland’s best movie.
Right away if you want the reasons why the war started, what sides politically the factions are, you’re really not going to get that. If I vaguely remember, A24 (aside from hideous AI ads) also offered up advertising to determine what side of the war you’re on. And that feels deeply antithetical to the movie itself. Aside from tidbits of exposition and the idea that the President (Nick Offerman) became too tyrannical, we never learn the history behind the war and why everyone’s fighting each other. While the film is about polarization and America adapting to a civil war, the movie is mostly about journalism in the same way that the film “Eddington” is about social media. And just like “Eddington”, the movie doesn’t have you pick a side, it just lets you observe. Almost like a journalist 🤔
The film follows a group of journalists as they make their way to Washington DC to get to the President in the midst of a civil war. There’s Kirsten Dunst as Lee, Wagner Moura as Joel the thrillseeker, Cailee Spaney as newcomer Jessie, and the underrated Stephen McKinley Henderson as the old-timer Sammy. Jesse Plemmons also makes an uncredited cameo as a soldier asking a question which had me on edge in the trailer “ok, what kind of American are you?” His one scene will have you gasping for air. The journalists witness horrible acts of violence committed to everyone, and all the while they photograph them often with anxiety and often with intrigue (and sometimes to the tune of De La Soul). I also said the film is really about journalism, but it’s still about war. Throughout the film we see people like us fear for their lives, use the war as an excuse for violence, or ignore it and go on with their lives. The first half has this incredibly stressful moment where Jessie and Lee >!see men strung up in a gas station car wash, and one of the employees jokes about how they went to school together. It’s a stressful, funny, and disturbingly believable scene.!< In addition the film has some great needledrops from Skid Row, electric pioneers the Silver Apples, De La Soul, and in the final scene the early New York punk band Suicide.
The ending is also one that has stuck with me. As the main characters >!make their way into DC to see the President, Lee dies in a moment which feels like an anticlimactic form of self-sacrifice. Lee pushes Jessie out of the way, and Jessie photographs Lee’s death as she’s gunned down. Joel asks the President for a quote, and all he says is “don’t let them kill me.” The President is then gunned down as Jessie photographs his death. It’s a moment which is both funny due to Nick Offerman’s straight delivery and Joel and Jessie’s casual attitude towards seeing a world leader die in front of them. I’ve always interpreted the ending as a “I succeeded but at what cost” moment for Jessie. She’s gotten the photograph she’s wanted, at the cost of her mentor. The final shot is the developed photo of the soldiers smiling over the president’s corpse, which superficially reminded me of a photo of Lynndie England in the Abu Ghraib prison acting casual while torturing prisoners.!<
Overall the movie is a slow-burn, almost ambient action film which will leave you uneasy and changed like the main characters. You’ll be thinking about the distance between journalism and its subjects. And I’m happy it’s more than a straight-forward action film, it allows you to think over that distance. I understand my pick is unconventional and the film isn’t for everyone, but of all Alex Garland’s films, “Civil War” will always be my favorite given how hooked I was throughout and how much the movie has stayed with me since it was in theaters. Even then it was a hard tie between this and “Annihilation”, which is saying something given I thought the film was better than the book. “Men” also sticks with me but for different reasons, but I don’t know how to feel about that one.