Civil War, the review of the film by Alex Garland

At a certain point in the film Civil War Of Alex Garlandan aspiring war photojournalist, Jessiereverently lists the credentials of his hero, the veteran Lee (Kirsten Dunst). The woman recalls that the latter was present and shot during “the Antifa massacre”, one of Garland's few hints at what may have led to the violent division of her fictional America. The reference is intelligent, even if its boundaries remain blurred: we never know if the anti-fascist demonstrators were massacred or if they were the ones who carried out the massacre. The detail is ambiguous and palindromic; it says a lot and nothing at the same time.

This moment is indicative of the film as a whole, arobust and well shot work which presents one scary scenario And guiltily intriguing, even if he then refuses to explore it. What we know is that in a moment not far from our present, a president – the archetypal strongman played by Nick Offermancompared to dictators like Pol Pot And Ceaușescu – is seizing power. A faction of rebels representing the Texas and the California (and maybe also the Florida) entered war with the army loyal to the president. Some journalists were executed on the South Lawn of the White House; Philadelphia is a bloody high-risk area; New York is the scene of a terrorist attack.

These are more or less all the details provided on theodyssey of Civil War across this land devastated by war, a succession of sketches depicting life during the Troubles. Garland prefers to remain vague to keep the politics; her film aspires to be one sober speculation on the mechanisms of this conflict which is consumed within national borders. There is no attempt to impart one moral, beyond reiterating the simple concept that killing people is usually bad. For the rest, Garland offers us an empty and objective film like the others do photographers (and the two reporters, played by Wagner Moura And Stephen McKinley Henderson) who run onto the battlefield, documenting a clash of which they have become simple observers.

However, Civil War he cannot be defined as apathetic, alone cynically detached from its probable initial inspiration. Garland didn't want to make this film on a whim; his very existence is a response to something that feels suspended in the air. As mentioned, Garland refuses to connect Civil War to that context, although this might seem more like a cop-out than a high-level moderate choice or elegant thirdness. What is certain is that Garland had no intention of making some sort of sequel to the tragic events of January 6th. I don't know, however, who would really want it anyway.

The indefiniteness of Civil War towards the many possible references to the real world in any case it would have been more tolerable, although always frustrating, if the film had at least delved deeper into its characters. To compensate for a deliberately underdeveloped environment, the people who animate it could have been defined in a way that captures our attention. Instead, even in this case, Garland adopts the half measures. Everyone is terribly opaque. We know that Lee is talented but tired, Jessie is too impatient, while Moura and Henderson's characters are at two ends of the adrenaline junkie spectrum. We know nothing about what drives them to do their work; the social dynamic they are involved in is confusingly delineated. For us they remain strangers, as well as, so to speak, their professions. (It's also curious that this film deals so much with still photography, making video cameras of any kind virtually disappear.) Ultimately we no longer care about the fate of these people; only an obvious and elementary empathy remains.

There is a scene that directs the film towards something insistent and terrifying, the encounter with a soldier played, as a laconic threat, by Dunst's husband, Jesse Plemons. Here Garland manages to create a real tensionalso because a clue about theideology who leads one of the warring factions. It is a horror sequence set under a sun that shines happily near a gurgling river, to emphasize a terrible contrast between the natural world and the men who wreak havoc on it. The scene offers a glimpse of a better film, a film that probes and shocks in its depiction of a animus extremely real American simmering to the point of catastrophe.

Certain, the final assault on the White House it's thunderous and shocking, almost like a perverse video game siege fantasy, except that the stakes are surreally high. Once finished, however, Garland does not stage no epilogue, no – not even a sketchy – summary of everything we have witnessed in the previous two hours. The film ends and that's it. War? Maybe it's over too, maybe not. Maybe a character is dead, maybe not. Civil War he leaves these, coldly and superficially, suspended in the air ambiguityas the credits roll and the audience exits, headed back to the place where, for better or worse, the answers to these questions really matter.