In trying to hedge its politics, 'Civil War' betrays its characters -- and the audience

Director Alex Garland is out to prove that you can make a movie about a modern American civil war without getting political. And he wants to do it in an election year.

The question is: Why?

His new film "Civil War," which opened Friday, follows an unlikely group of journalists as they make their way from New York to Washington, D.C., as the rebel "Western Forces," made up of California and Texas, close in on the capital. Two of those journalists — Lee (Kirsten Dunst), a legendary conflict photographer, and Joel (Wagner Moura), a writer — hope to secure the final interview and image of the sitting president of the United States (Nick Offerman) when they arrive, before the commander in chief is dragged from office and killed.

Battle lines force the group to take a circuitous route, along which they encounter the terrible, often random violence that has taken hold of the country amid the internecine conflict.

It is a powerful film, which Garland has said he made to underscore the importance of journalism: to remind us that much of what we know about the world is a direct result of journalists telling and showing us what is going on at any given moment. Even if their lives and/or mental health are at stake.

This is an admirable and important goal, particularly at our own historical moment. But "the Western Forces"? What now?

As many noted from the moment the "Civil War" trailer dropped, it's tough to get invested in the problems of four little people when you're busy trying to imagine what set of circumstance — beyond, say, an alien invasion — would forge an alliance between California and Texas, and precipitate a second breakaway faction identified as "the Florida Alliance."

Especially one that puts these states at odds with the president and, presumably, whatever remains of the U.S. Army.

I guess the people fighting on the president's side are what remains of the army; it's not exactly clear.

Much is not clear in "Civil War." This is intentional. Garland is not interested in exploring the reason the Western Forces came together to attack the White House beyond alluding to the social currents that might make a modern civil war possible: racism, nationalism, isolationism, apathy.

...continued

swipe to next page