Alex Garland’s new film, “Civil War,” has been dismissed by many as shallow and unfocused. In its effort to remain politically neutral, the film loses the chance to tell any kind of story. But is that a fair assessment of the film? Warning: Spoilers ahead.
The movie entitled “Civil War” is set in a dystopian near future, in which an unnamed president has assumed dictatorial powers for himself, is illegally serving in a third term of office, has ordered airstrikes on American civilians, and is having journalists shot on sight. Opposing him is something called the “Florida Alliance,” as well as the “Western Forces of Texas and California.”
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“Wait… what?” Some readers might be saying when they read this (or when they watched the trailer if they did so). After all, in what world would Texas and California find themselves on the same secessionist side? When asked about this in an interview, Alex Garland had the following to say:
“There is a fascist president. The president is killing their own citizens. Then what’s happened is two states, who are in different political positions, are saying, ‘We are more concerned about a fascist, Constitution-smashing, violent president. We are more concerned about that, than we are about our political differences.’ And then, there’s a counter to that, which is, if you cannot conceptualize that polarized politics could be overcome in order to combat a fascist president,what is that saying about the nature of polarized politics? …The film is about journalists doing old fashioned reporting. I’m trying to echo that form of reporting, and I would be breaking that form of reporting if I started throwing bias all over it, and on top of that would be dismantling the argument within the film, which is that polarization is not a good thing.”
While some might point to him saying that the president is fascist and say that he is painting the president as a Donald Trump type, that’s not evident in the film, as the political spectrum is never addressed in the film. Indeed, the war itself is really just the backdrop of the central story, which, as Garland said, is about journalists who just want to report on the war and what’s happening without taking sides or making judgments about which side is in the right, or, indeed, if either side is right? The president and his forces are portrayed as committing terrible atrocities, but the other side doesn’t have hands that are entirely clean either.
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Matt Zoller Seitz wrote that the film is: “a thought experiment about journalistic ethics, set in a future United States, yet reminiscent of classic movies about Western journalists covering the collapse of foreign countries…” He goes on: “Specifically, and most originally, ‘Civil War’ is a portrait of the mentality of pure reporters, the types of people who are less interested in explaining what things ‘mean’ (in the manner of an editorial writer or ‘pundit’) than in getting the scoop before the competition, by any means necessary.. The kinds of obsessive war correspondents who rarely come back to their own countries don’t care about the real-world impact of the political realities encoded within the epic violence they chronicle, or else compartmentalize it to stay focused.”
While critics often get things wrong, Seitz is right on the money about what the film is. Love it or hate it, it’s a film about journalists trying to be objective in the midst of a terrible war.
What do you think? Do you think Civil War was a smear job by leftists against those on the right? Do you think it went so far in trying to be unoffensive that it is just bland and forgettable? Or do you think that it’s a film that tries to say something about journalism while trying to be fair and balanced?
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Its not, more like Civil Bore.
Its not about Civil War. It’s not even about journalistic ethics. We never question her ability to be objective in the film.
It’s about the internal conflict, a civil war, that happens when a veteran photo journalist is confronted with a protege and questions whether her work and sacrifice has made a difference at all.
It is about the failure of journalism and the failure of the audience. It asks whether the sacrifice for journalism is worth it.
It’s propaganda, trying to convince us that ‘professional journalists’ are brave truthteller heroes and cover up the fact that every single one of them is a corrupt piece of human garbage. They have to be just to get hired.
No, it’s not about civil war, it’s about elevating monsters as heroes.
Yep
The problem with this analysis is the movie is very clear in stating that the heroine’s journalistic career was spent overseas covering conflicts and she sent pics back to the US to tell them “you do not want that here” and she failed completely as a civil war still happened.
Journalists can’t be heroes when the premise of the movie is that their work is ineffective.
The culminating moment of the movie is about the heroine deciding to save her protégés life instead of continuing to do journalism and despite her sacrificial act it does not stop the protege from becoming a journalist. The cycle continues.
There’s no secret agenda in the film. It’s all very clear.
Heh, no, they stopped the ‘secret agenda’ a while back, which came to a head when they bluntly falsified the 2020 election.
Nope, they are proud of their corruption. They trot it out and show it now every chance they get. The movie was clearly stated propaganda.
Remember that their audience is filled with people with the average IQ of a cabbage. I was rooting for the president. Journalists SHOULD be shot on sight.
Your argument is they are elevating monsters as heroes but in this film those heroes are failures and the civil war occurring is evidence of their failure.
You didn’t watch the film did you?
You have to watch the film to have an opinion worth considering
Sure did, but I didn’t watch the last third.
If you are eating a sundae with a giant turd at the bottom, you don’t have to eat all the way to the turd to have a valid opinion on it.