“I’ve never been so scared in my entire life. And I’ve never felt more alive.”

I think Alex Garland very intentionally chose Texas and California as the two secessionist states in Civil War. If states were people, could you imagine any two less likely to unite on the same side of a societal divide in this day and age?¹ This allows him to totally skirt the obvious political baggage that you’d expect a near-future story about a civil war in the United States to carry. This has rubbed many critics the wrong way because they cannot draw elementary parallels between the film and the powder keg of modern American politics. They want the President (Nick Offerman) to be an obvious stand-in for Trump. They want the secessionists to be virtuous champions fighting for a cause they (the critics) believe in. They need to know what petty straw finally broke the camel’s back and kicked off the sectarian conflict. These are the same critics who think Moonlight (2016) and Nomadland (2020) are profound artistic statements. Indeed, I went in expecting not to like the movie because I thought it would be the kind of film all these people wanted it to be.

Garland seems to revel in this sense of uncertainty. At one point, his four main characters—all journalists played by Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, and Stephen McKinley Henderson—find themselves trapped between two rival snipers. After taking cover from a few would-be-fatal shots, they discover they’re hiding right next to a well hidden sharpshooter and his spotter. Whispered questions about which side they’re on and who the opponent is are finally met with a request to be quiet and a quick explanation that the man tried to kill them, so they are now also trying to kill the man. And isn’t that an apt metaphor for political discourse? It doesn’t feel like an ideological argument but a battle for survival. It also illustrates that many soldiers are engaged in a conflict they don’t understand beyond their immediate task of eliminating their opponent.

There’s a scene featured in the trailer that is likewise startling without tipping its hand. A sadistic Jesse Plemmons, decked out in nondescript military gear, dumping bodies into a mass grave, casually tossing lime onto the sprawling pile, when two of the veteran journalists approach to save the young protégé who is being held at gunpoint and is poised to join the heap. “What kind of American are you?” he asks them. There are wrong answers and no hints. It effectively recalls moments from older films where a Western journalist finds himself in a dangerous predicament while documenting the collapse of a foreign regime: The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), The Killing Fields (1982), Salvador (1986).

In essence a road movie, Civil War follows the four journalists as they meander toward the White House, hoping to score a last-minute interview with the President before the Western Forces defeat what’s left of the U.S. military and take over the country. Along the way they find America in shambles. They pause for Spaeny to snap some photos of a military chopper crashed in the parking lot of an abandoned mall. Some isolationist pockets of civilization ostensibly deny the existence of the war (while snipers prowl the rooftops), while others revel in the chaos by charging exorbitant prices for gas and guarding their merchandise with assault rifles. One of the gas station thugs has two looters hanging by their wrists in an abandoned car wash—he seems a little bit too giddy about torturing guys he used to know in high school; he even poses for a picture.

Dunst’s character is a decorated war photographer and her philosophy—worked out over the course of a lengthy and challenging career—is to not ask too many questions about the conflicts she’s documenting. To not care about the real-world implications of the grim spectacles she photographs. That would turn her despondent, angry, bitter, confused, apathetic. Instead, she suppresses her empathy and merely “records” these harrowing images so others, perhaps those who wield power, can ask the questions and help steer us out of such dire situations. Perhaps tat’s what Garland is attempting to do with Civil War: he’s not asking questions, he’s presenting a speculative scenario (that we could arrive at by any number of avenues) and sending the raw images out for others to consider.

Even so, journalism itself is not held up as some noble profession and destroying your humanity to take pictures of human carnage is not portrayed as a righteous thing to do. The film opens on a suicide bombing. Afterward, in a New York highrise hotel, the journalists celebrate (I guess that’s the right word) with rounds of shots. On their way to D.C. they see tracer rounds lighting up the night sky from a distant skirmish and Moura’s character suggests he is sexually aroused by the sight. Spaeny’s young go-getter relies on more experienced photographers to look out for her while constantly taking absurd risks to get cool shots. These are not healthy, mindful, honorable people that should be held up as role models; they’ve chosen their path at least partially because they are adrenaline junkies.

The film repeats a neat trick that underscores the sacrifice the journalists are making by overriding their humanity for the sake of spreading the word about atrocity. In what should be exciting action movie moments, Dunst, calm but full of adrenaline, steps out and snaps a photo, which we see in a brief static frame while the sound drops out, shifting the mood from one of frenetic chaos to one of subliminal horror. Each time we’re prompted to think about the mental, emotional, physical, ethical, and spiritual tolls such a profession might have on a person. Along with the lack of exposition, this air of detachment makes the film feel akin to Apocalypse Now (1979) or Full Metal Jacket (1987), films about a real war that was just far enough in the rearview mirror that audiences were willing to pay for a ticket to go see a surreal recounting of it. Except, of course, the events of Civil War have not occurred (and hopefully never will).

Understanding that it didn’t fit the preconceived notions many had for it, I found Civil War to be a solemn and mature picture with much more on its mind and soul than the one that progressive critics wanted would have.

1. Caveat: granted, there are pockets of libertarians and conservatives in California and pockets of progressives in Texas; but one of the reasons Garland’s avoiding spelling the politics of the situation out is because forcing every political issue to break down into one of two-ish lines of thinking is detrimental to art specifically but also life in general.