If we could possibly pinpoint a single solitary reason why the United States has gone to shit in recent decades — and I realize that finding just one reason is a bit of a stretch — it might be the “philosophy” that has gripped what has been passing for journalism for far too long: the notion of false balance, that there are two sides to every story and that both of these sides are equally valid, even in cases when this is not even remotely plausible.
Just one example: “Centuries of industrial civilization dumping massive quantities of carbon into the air is heating up the planet to a dangerous degree,” says one representative of the vast majority of climate scientists, versus “LOL, no it’s not,” says one of the few scientists who is a paid shill for a fossil-fuel company. This is not honest. This is not watchdog journalism. This is pandering to corporate influence. This is a recipe for a planetary suicide pact.
This is the milieu in which writer-director Alex Garland’s (Men, Ex Machina) spineless dystopian action drama Civil War is perfectly happy to sit. Here, the United States is mired in an internecine conflict the details of which we, the audience, are not made privy. We are given brief glimpses of a speech by the American president (Nick Offerman: The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, Bad Times at the El Royale) as he rails against the insurrectionist “Western Forces” of *check notes* *does double take* Texas and California, two states that almost anyone playing attention to the actual current tinderbox situation in the real US would reasonably presume would be on opposite sides of any profound societal rift in America. We hear nothing from the Western Forces, certainly nothing that would lead us to appreciate why two states with such disparate cultures might band together, or even why they’ve rebelled. The lack of context for anything and everything occurring here feels like utter cowardice on Garland’s part, a default to the ruinous both-sides-ism that pretends that every perspective must be equally worthy. Why is America at war with itself? Probably good reasons on all sides? Bullshit.
But it gets worse. Civil War is not about the conflict but about the reporters covering it: photojournalist Lee (Kirsten Dunst: The Beguiled, Hidden Figures) and her professional partner Joel (Wagner Moura: Elysium, Woman on Top), and their tagalongs, newbie Jessie (Cailee Spaeny: On the Basis of Sex, Pacific Rim: Uprising) and veteran Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson: Dune, Lady Bird). They’ve heard rumors of an impending assault on Washington DC by the Western Forces — forecasted to reach the capital on July 4th *rolls eyes* — and so they’re gonna hit the road from the battle they’ve just covered in New York City in the hopes of reaching DC in time to catch some good pix.
Garland thinks he’s championing journalists here, and to a tiny degree, he is: The cast is beyond terrific, but they deserve a far more courageous and insightful movie than this one. Spaeny, her Jessie spunky and sparky and about to learn hard lessons that will shock her out of her naivete, is physically unrecognizable from her turn as a very young Mrs Elvis Presley in last year’s Priscilla but psychologically similar in how she nicely balances a youngster’s enthusiasm with the awful realities she will encounter. Dunst carries the heavy weight of a war photographer’s experience with a weary sort of horror; her Lee explicitly states that, basically, she never imagined that the nightmares she had captured overseas would be repeated at home.
But Lee and Jessie, and Joel and Sammy, exist in a larger context, one that they understand and that we lack. They know — because of course they do, they live in this world — what the multiple sides of this conflict stand for. (The US seems to be split into more factions than just two, but it’s difficult to tell.) Denying that context to those of us digesting their stories is not only unfair to us but unfair to the characters: we cannot make any sort of determination about what kind of journalism they are attempting to do. Are they aiming for an impossible “view from nowhere,” that faux objectivity of modern reportage that is so damaging? Or do they intend something more meaningful for their work? Garland’s own view from nowhere is an immense disservice to his characters.
There is some power in Civil War, especially visually: one image that has stuck with me is of a crashed military helicopter in a shopping-mall parking lot, a potent shattering of casual American capitalism, and of the relative calm and stability that allows it. There is a value, too, in a knock to American cultural complacency: depictions of the sort of civil unrest and outright urban warfare we are all too used to seeing on the news, happening in other faraway places and often with the complicity of the US government, should be a wakeup call alerting us to the very dangerous situation the US is in right now.
But instead, Garland has given us something dangerously irresponsible: a movie with Hollywood gloss — “experience it in IMAX” — at an incredibly precarious moment for the United States, when small-scale insurrection has already happened and wider conflict does not seem impossible. Civil War has nothing interesting or new to say about the journalism at its center, and with its pretense of “objectivity” it lacks any meaningful focus. I’m genuinely angry about Civil War in a way that few movies have ever made me.
more films like this:
• A Private War [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK | BFI Player UK]
• Bushwick [Prime US | Prime UK | Apple TV US | Apple TV UK]
Oh, Alex “look at me I’m soooo cool” Garland. Watching 28 Days Later recently (for which he wrote the screenplay) it occurred to me that what he’s best at is pasting together the good bits of other films, books, etc., and smoothing over the gaps to make it look good as long as you never commit the deadly sin of actually thinking about any of the points that get raised.
I know MaryAnn liked Never Let Me Go (another Garland screenplay) more than I did, and fair enough, but again I don’t think its script is its strong point.
Except for Annihilation, which I really like, I far prefer Garland’s early scripts that were directed by someone else.
Too bad. I like Nick Offerman, and I’d like to see the better version of this movie that you’ve described, with a coherent reason for why the two sides are two sides.
Offerman is barely in the film, if that’s any consolation. He doesn’t have the chance to develop a character. You’re not missing much.
This is what it looks like when an ideologically captured individual gives a critique. The true irony here is this critic is exactly the kind of person propelling our nation toward the premise of the film. The “muh side is right and the other side is evil” is exactly the kind of thinking we need to call out as being insufferably childish and annoyingly ignorant. The point of the film is not what side was at fault. The point of the film was that if we are not careful this can happen to us. One way to keep that from happening is to consistently call out the ideologues when they slither out from underneath the rock.
You seem great. Sometimes the other side is truly evil! Hope this helps.
Haven’t seen this yet, but I’m gonna take the (perhaps ironically) controversial position that there is legit value in “bothsidesism”. Yes, the “lol no they aren’t” shill is clearly dumber and less worth taking seriously than the other, but I would still rather be aware of their existence and form my own educated judgment of their rebuttal than the media try to pretend it doesn’t exist. People who lack critical thinking skills aren’t going to be that interested in reading any reputable news sources past the headlines anyway, and I really doubt media of record presenting “both sides” has been as damaging to national politics as the myopic echo chambers facilitated by social media algorithms.
Much as it might be easier to believe US politics can be simplistically divided into those on the “right” and “wrong” sides of history, the reality is humans are complicated and have all kinds of personal motivations for believing and acting as they do. That goes for the California/Texas thing as well. The states may have had a majority of voters supporting different candidates in the last presidential election, but there were actually more voters nominally for that guy in California than Texas. And there are certainly very progressive pockets in Texas as well, most famously the capital city. They can’t just be boiled down to the ideologies of their current ruling establishments. As far as practical economics go, the states really are quite dependent on each other, and if it really came to civil war that would probably be a much more compelling motivation for determining alliances.
To put it in I think a quite urgent and topical context, we absolutely need level headed media coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict. I don’t think people needed much persuading from news agencies to pick their sides there, but a certain degree of prosaic, unemotional documentation of what is actually happening is essential not just for conducting intelligent foreign policy now but also for historical education purposes later.
Except they are treated seriously by our pathetic excuse for a media.
But that’s not the only option! Both-sides-ism is literally about treating both sides are equally valid. It is possible to present idiotic arguments and then explain why they are idiotic arguments.
That’s why the headlines cannot present those “view from nowhere” perspectives! Headlines like “Climate change debate continues” are the problem. We need headlines like “Vast majority of climate scientists are terrified” and “Fossil fuel lobbyists continue to thwart action on warming.”
No one is saying anything is that simple. But there is absolutely no legitimate argument to be made that, say, Donald Trump is on the right side of anything. As I said in a reply to another commenter, sometimes the other side is evil! (Biden and the Democrats are hugely problematic too.)
Of course there are. But the very definition of a “pocket” in this sense is that it does not hold much sway over the larger culture.
Honestly, I blame 2016 on Trump not being taken seriously enough by the media. Everyone portrayed him and all the dumb things he said as a joke and didn’t really take notice of the deep appeal he had with his base until it was too late.
I guarantee you the far right echo chambers aren’t leaning on mainstream “climate change debate continues” headlines to fuel their rage. They’re looking more to incendiary headlines like “Cortez supports Climate HOAX!!!!!!” from friendly sources like Breitbart, Fox News or NY Post. On the other side, we definitely have no shortage of “scientists are terrified” headlines as things stand, but you’re far more likely to actually persuade people to come to your side if you present why they’re wrong with emotional, demeaning language kept in check.
Whatever you define both-sides-ism as, I get the sense that the criticism of it as a concept usually comes from a place of thinking the “other side” deserves no legitimate coverage whatsoever. I don’t think you or anyone else making that accusation really cares to do in-depth research of the NY Times to determine whether or not they are truly giving “equal” coverage to both the left and right. I personally think no progress can be made unless at least some kind of good faith profile of their motives and beliefs is possible, so the “correct” side can understand where they’re coming from and address the underlying differences in perspective.
I hate Trump as much as the next person, but there is a difference between the man himself and the followers he has brainwashed into supporting him. It has been relatively easy for people to make that distinction when it comes to the active armed conflict I mentioned above involving two single-minded and borderline genocidal regimes, and I do not believe the right is that far gone yet in practice even if they have very backwards politics.
Maybe if he wins in November I’ll feel differently, but I don’t think this movie is gonna have much of an impact on that regardless. Personally, I have more than enough people yelling at me already telling me what positions to take a stand on and who to vote for, so I’m good with Garland making the “view from nowhere” movie he wanted to and not just being another voice in that cacophony.
Both-sides bullshit has been going on for FAR longer than since the 2016 election.
None of this is about “far right echo chambers.” Mainstream media — network news, cable channels, supposedly serious papers-of-record like The New York Times and The Washington Post have been both-sidesing for decades.
Citations definition needed here.
I honestly have no idea what you’re referring to here. There are “other sides” that are completely insane that get treated as if they are legitimate. There are also “other sides” that get treated with kid gloves while “other other sides” are utterly ignored. If you cannot see that not only Donald Trump the candidate but ordinary-schmoe supporters of Trump have been treated by the mainstream media is ways that are wildly unfair, to their benefit, I don’t know what to tell you.
Yes, there is. And yet where is the coverage that explains — gently, with compassion for the brainwashed — what Trump has done to them, and why it is so dangerous? Instead we get endless uncritical interviews with Iowa voters in diners about why they love Trump. It’s horseshit.
My complaints about this movie are not about whatever impact it might have in November.
Garland can make whatever sort of movie he wants. But the current cacophony is absolutely of the “view from nowhere,” and his voice is now part of it.
Thank you, Baby Jesus (AND MaryAnn) for a new opening still.
???
The new picture at the top of your column…no more DUNE.
Yeah, sorry, I’m working on getting back up to speed.
I thought this was perfectly okay, but I found the whole thing to be a criticism of the sort of “objective” journalism that gets you just focused on “getting the shot” while people get set on fire in front of you. At the end of the movie,
I think it’s his best film: I feel similarly to you about Ex Machina and Men, and I am simply too in love with the Annihilation books to be okay with all the simplifications he did for the movie.
I’ve got mixed feelings, which unfortunately means this response is necessarily going to also reek of both-sidesism. The review makes the valid critique that the context of the conflict and political positions of the warring factions are essential information. The film seems to irresponsibly throw up its hands and exclaim, “It doesn’t matter how we got here, who’s right or who’s wrong, we’re stuck in this shitty situation, so let’s document this cool, violent action ‘objectively’ before someone else does it first.”
One could view the choice of California, Texas, and Florida as rebellious states with no further information given as the height of cynicism, a cowardly choice of the most prominent Red State, Blue State, and everyone’s favorite Wacky State so no one in the audience will feel picked out, picked on, or villified.
Given our present political situation and media landscape, it’s natural to wish that the script would make a conscious effort to specifically point out the lunacy and blindness pushing us towards division in an attempt to pull us back from the brink. If, for some odd reason, your faith in humanity is riding precariously high, scan the comments underneath the trailer of this film to see your fellow Americans salivating at the chance to act out the violence in this film upon their neighbors. Even for edgelords, bots, and trolls, it’s a new low bar.
So I get it, how are we meant to prevent such a disaster without an honest accounting of how this fictional conflict originated? Are we to assume by extension that because our own Civil War had “very good people” on both sides that there was no right or wrong perspective on slavery? Hey, maybe that Putin’s not such a bad guy, after all Ukraine’s government is pretty corrupt too. It’s an extremely sharp and dangerous ridge to straddle.
Although I understand that criticism and agree with it to an extent, the film is also making several statements about war in general that are worth repeating and stand in valuable and stark contrast to the childish good/evil lessons of the average action flick:
1) In most modern wars, the civilian population and front-line soldiers don’t truly care about ideological differences and just want to stay alive. I work with soldiers every day and my mother is a retired solider. You would be amazed at how little they know or understand the politics of the government they are willing to kill and die for. I personally know soldiers who served in Afghanistan who know absolutely nothing about why they went there, what the culture is like, what their mission was, or why they left. I truly doubt the average poor family in Gaza cares much about the intricacies of international Israeli politics. The film’s insistence on concealing the specific nature of the conflict aids in making this point.
2) Black people are overrepresented in the US military, and suffer more from poverty and homelessness which means that black Americans are overrepresented as casualties in any modern US war. Many of the people who die in this movie are black, and special care is made to compare the diverse stadium tent shelters and water riots to the all white rural town. This may have been offensive and exploitative for some viewers, but I felt it was done in an effort to illustrate this point.
3) Middle and rural Americans often make claims of being apolitical and wanting to keep politics out of popular culture and day-to-day life while not realizing that status-quo isolationism is itself a highly political and often dangerous stance. The scene of the relatively peaceful small town with an undercurrent of potential violence and the nearby sniper scene set to Christmas music were both effective in supporting this point.
4) The true evil in any war is xenophobia and a loss of empathy. Yes, the big picture politics and history are essential to true understanding, but at the ground, front-line level this film is operating at, the real demon is fear of the other. The film does a great job making the audience feel and understand a world where every stranger is potentially an enemy, much better than most genre pieces that attempt the same atmosphere, like The Walking Dead, for example.
5) It is impossible to be passionless and completely objective in the media. These reporters try to remain objective, but eventually succumb to their basic humanity. The characters believe that their work is important, valuable, and even potentially transformative, but the film as a whole is far more cynical, suggesting that the way we treated Iraqis in Abu Ghraib was just a preview of how we might one day treat other Americans, and that such treatment should always be shocking, disgusting, and disgraceful.
6) American presidents will lie openly to remain in power and maintain the illusion of control and machismo. The film makes a point of mentioning that the president is in his third term, and also opens with him practicing a speech that is completely out of touch with reality in a desperate attempt to maintain power. The role is played by an actor famous for playing a macho libertarian who claims to hate big government. These facts all seemed to me to be a clear indictment of Trump, but I understand if Trump critics wanted an even clearer message sent. The audience for this movie has skewed heavily left, so I think on some level, the message was received.
From a technical standpoint, the film is beautifully shot, with gripping visceral action, and plenty of somber moments of reflection panning over empty stretches of concrete ruins. The acting is solid, although the only outstanding performance comes from Jesse Plemons, in a chillingly accurate portrayal of a man hanging on to an image of that mythical truly “Great America” by a quickly unravelling thread. I grew up in Texas and was the only Asian kid in most of my schools. I met this guy many times as a child, and that ever-present cocktail of ignorance, pride, and certainty is always terrifying.
My only major gripe other than the lack of context is that the penultimate death scene could have been performed more convincingly – it didn’t land as hard as it should have in a film this heavy, but I generally get what Garland was going for, and most of it worked for me. My main fear was that the film would glorify war in typical action movie fashion (Saving Private Ryan, Blackhawk Down, etc.), but the horrifying, sudden, senseless, random unexplained violence successfully made me feel the hopeless insanity of war in a much more realistic and frankly necessary way than those films. If you’re looking for a movie specifically about the dangers of our current political situation, this ain’t gonna cut the mustard. However, if you want a movie about the horrors of modern war in general, this admittedly watered down tonic might be stiff enough to drive the horror home.
Another reason why this movie is dangerously irresponsible.
There are no significant soldier or civilian characters here. This movie is not about a soldier’s or civilian’s experience of war. At all.
But would that be remotely the case in the conflict this movie depicts?
If I recall correctly, mention of this happens once, very briefly in the background (on a radio news report, I think?), and would be very easy to miss. Apparently this president has also disbanded the FBI, but I don’t recall that in the film, so that must be another tidbit that slips by too quickly. It is extremely easy to watch this film, be paying attention, and not grasp what the very loosely sketched situation.
I’m also pretty sure that the fact that the “Western Alliance” consists of California and Texas is NOT explained in the movie. I’m pretty sure that is something from the trailer.
Leaving out the context and motivations for the war was cowardly, but the conversations with the sniper in the shootout, and to a lesser extent the cashier at the clothing store, were meant to be a defense of this decision. Those two scenes seemed expressly designed to show that ordinary people and grunts didn’t know, understand, or care much about the political specifics of the conflict.
Garland has always done a poor job creating and developing characters and world building – I’ve never seen Men, but in his other films and this one, the characters are broad archetypes without complexity or nuance. Good actors can paper over these shortcomings with unique performances, but that only goes so far, and usually not nearly far enough.
Similarly, his films also never have anything intellectually interesting to say. Annihilation and Ex Machina are thematically and narratively shallow when compared to their sci-fi source material/inspirations and not only bring nothing new to the table, but actively dumb down ideas that were well explored decades ago.
His strengths are purely visual and structural, and any emotional reactions they provoke are a result of the beauty of the images, the skill of the actors, and the precision of the design of his stories, though small and limited in scope. It’s like looking at a tiny, well-crafted, empty box. You’re understandably asking, “Why did he make this useless, empty thing? Where are the people? Where are the ideas?” This is a case for me where his empty, shiny, shallow storytelling and barely there characterizations meshed well with the subject material – modern War and modern Journalism.
Once we get past the decision to make a movie with this premise at this moment, which many would argue was at best poorly timed, and at worst dangerously opportunistic, Garland was faced with a Catch 22. If he made the movie you and many others wanted to see, an intellectually honest and complex film about the actual danger that Trump and those on the far right present to the unity of our country, that could very well lead them to think the murder of fellow Americans was their only option to escape the oppressive “wokeness” they claim is stripping them of their families, freedoms, firearms, and faith, he would rightfully be accused of fanning the flames of division that I assume he wants to extinguish.
There’s no way to make such a movie without it coming across as condescending and almost half of the country would be driven even further into the arms of extremism by a movie that labeled them evil, murderous, deluded xenophobic racists. I know the prospect of four more years of Trump is a horrifying prospect that heralds the crumbling of democracy and the failure of basic education and human decency, but making a fictional movie about how him literally destroying the country would solve nothing and reinforce every Hollywood liberal stereotype.
More importantly, I don’t believe Garland is intellectually or artistically capable of making such a movie, and the studio’s not financially capable of funding it, so he compromised and made the most honest movie he could in his typical shallow, well-constructed style. By architectural analogy, it’s a brutalist film, ugly, flat, lifeless, emotionless. Every character that shows any compassion or humanity is sanded out of existence by the oppressive design of the meaningless, unexplained cruelty of the war, the shot, and the sound bite in a neverending cycle of the victim becoming the victor becoming the oppressor. It’s depressingly realistic, but the characters keep trying to express their humanity, even knowing that they will ultimately fail and die. It’s not deep, it’s not brave, but for “big budget” Garland, it’s about as good as it gets, or more hopefully, as good as it’s gotten so far.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m gonna disagree with much of what you’ve said here.
But the journalists understand! And the journalists are the protagonists of this movie. The great crime of Civil War is that its protagonists have a context that the audience does not. We cannot fully appreciate how they are reacting to what they see and experience without appreciating how it all fits into their own understanding of the war.
Arguably, they do not. See this essay in yesterday’s Washington Post, by an actual war photographer, who speaks to this, and who seems to agree with what I said about the movie, that “its pretense of ‘objectivity’ is unfair to the journalist protagonists the film thinks it’s championing.”
That’s a big qualifier! This movie most certainly did NOT have to be made at this moment.
There’s no particular version of this movie that I wanted to see. I am approaching the movie on the terms it presents itself to us with.
I don’t see how that’s the only possible result,
I disagree.
There are a LOT of assumptions packed into this not-even-a-sentence. But it sounds very much like the typical argument that anyone who adheres to progress values and wants to change the world for the better had surely not do or say anything that might scare anyone to the right of, oh, Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, which ensures that no progress can be made.
I don’t believe that Garland thinks he is championing journalists, at least not across the board. Two of the four main characters, Joel and Jessie, are not being championed at all; they are shown for the cynical (Joel) or selfish (Jessie) scoop-hunters that they are. Jessie only cares about her photos and does not care about the safety of her colleagues, who naturally feel that they have to look after her. She behaves irresponsibly (think of the scene in which she jumps from one car to the other, with both cars at high speed) when taking her pix, all the time having to be pulled back by more sensible colleagues. And she is directly responsible for Lee’s death, because she (Jessie) was the idiot that stood in the middle of the White House corridor for ‘the’ photo, and Lee caught the bullet intended for her. In other words, Jessie is not being championed at all.
And neither is Joel. Someone who claims to get horny when looking at faraway explosions is not my idea of a decent and engaged journalist. And there were other examples (his callous laughing with a colleague after the shooting around a building and the dead soldier), with the worst one at the very end: his ‘that will do’ when the dying president gives him the quote he so much wants.
In sum, two very unpleasant characters. So no, no championing, not at all. I rather think that Garland wanted to show (among other things, of course) how overambitious journalists can become disconnected from what is generally considered decent and responsible behaviour.
I think you can champion characters while still showing them as flawed. But I maintain what I wrote in my review, that the faux objectivity of the film distances us from understanding these characters. Flawed, damaged people can still do good work. But we have no basis here for understanding their work at all.