Civil War - Adults Only

A house divided against itself cannot stand. — Abraham Lincoln

The past few years have been anything but smooth sailing here in America, haven’t they? The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The ongoing political debacles and battles. The collective uncertainty we feel about the future of our country. It’s no surprise that so many people like myself are sitting by the edge of our seats wondering what will become of America unless we take a step back and evaluate where we stand in our country and how far we’re willing to go before whatever discourse that may erupt between us clouds our judgment and demolishes any shred of decency we may have left as American citizens.

So what would happen if our country continued to descend the way we fear it might until it’s nothing but constant chaos, anarchy, and bloodshed in every corner? 

Leave it to Alex Garland’s Civil War to shed light on such a scenario.

This film takes place in the future – it doesn’t specify how far it’s set – where the United States of America became so divided that a second American Civil War gradually broke out, leaving every American citizen to either fend for themselves or fight each other to the death. In a recent turn of events, California and Texas have already broken off from the United States rule, as the President made a statement in response to it. He thought victory for the U.S. was at hand, even though it was evident he addressed only a portion of what was happening in their country.

In the middle of all this chaos was a veteran war photographer named Lee Smith, played by Kirsten Dunst. She planned to negotiate an interview with the President in the hopes that her efforts, as well as her photographic evidence of the meeting, would’ve encouraged a potential end to the war. So, she plotted to undergo a quest across the war-torn states from New York City down to Washington, DC, which had devolved into a perpetual battleground of those who sought supremacy. Joining her were some of her colleagues, including Joel, a fellow journalist who’s known Lee and worked with her for a lengthy amount of time, and Sammy, who was among the last journalists to have worked for The New York Times before it shut down and was also primarily the voice of reason among his group. Finally, the newest member of the group, Jessie Collin, was a late teens and early 20s young girl who aspired to be a war photojournalist and idolized Lee, for she wanted to be just like her in terms of taking photographs in the war zone. Lee was not on board with the idea of having her tag along with them on what she considered such a dangerous journey. So, as the four of them got together and set out for Washington, DC, they had to stay watchful of anyone who could’ve been out for their blood or mistaken them for enemy Americans. Would they have made it through the carnage and chaos in one piece and made it to Washington, DC, to attempt to negotiate some peaceful means with the President? 

When I first heard about the movie, I was already intrigued. I could already have guessed the plot based on its title, but only because of its futuristic elements rather than historical. The only other film I’m familiar with that carries that title is Captain America: Civil War, which was about Captain America, Iron Man, and their friends debating and fighting each other for what they considered actual ethical values. Here, another Civil War was already breaking out across the United States, and the country became divided due to the differences between the states. California and Texas were just among the latest states to break away from the rule of their originating country, and they did so together. The other territories that were established, outside of California and Texas as they became individual republic nations, were the Florida Alliance, the Western Forces, and the United States rule, which was renamed the Loyalist States. Such a catastrophic fracturing of the country already made this such an imaginative outlook of what could become of the United States should a second American Civil War ever occur, and I hope it never will.

But let’s talk about what I’ve noticed many people complain about regarding this movie that, in my opinion, serves as its greatest strength instead. For one thing, it’s not been specified what caused the second American Civil War to break out and erupt all across the country. Because of this, many people expressed their frustrations about the lack of a definitive reason for the civil war to break out throughout the country. 

But, in my opinion, that was most welcomed because, at this point, that’s potentially the movie’s way of saying that anything could have caused a civil war, especially the one tearing America apart in this movie. With the first American Civil War, its main foundations, besides slavery, were political differences, presidential issues, and social issues. And, whatever occurred in America to have caused such a great divide, such as what is seen in the movie, must have been severe enough to send America downhill the way it had here. If the movie revealed the main cause behind the Civil War, it would’ve taken away the ambiguity apparent throughout. At the end of the day, not only is there no telling what would’ve sparked the Civil War in the first place, but it leaves the real horrors of the foundations of the second American Civil War to our imagination.

The next subject not discussed in the film was toyed around very effectively and is crucial in these times. Nobody, not even the main characters or the supporting characters, mentioned what political party they were in. Whether they’re Republican, Democrat, Conservative, Liberal, Left, Right, or whatever, nobody mentioned who was what. Even the President wasn’t mentioned as to what political party he served. Because of that, it was not specified which kind of allegiance the states were, even after they had broken off from the U.S. government. For all I know, the United States President went as far as to abandon the U.S. Constitution. So that tells me that no matter who was fighting whom, the message is still the same: regardless of our differences, waging war with our fellow brothers and sisters will cause nothing but harm and regression to all involved. And as we’ve seen from all the carnage throughout the country in this film, it would only have plunged America down a downward spiral from which it’d be impossible to recover unless anyone acted out sooner rather than later. 

In one memorably chilling sequence, the main characters ran into a couple of soldiers who were disposing of a multitude of bodies. And despite Sammy’s urgencies to stay out of the way, Lee, Joel, and their friends decided to peek in because they wanted to rescue Jessie and Joel’s other buddy, Tony, from the clutches of these soldiers who turned out to have been armed and dangerous. When the soldiers pushed the nearest reporters into revealing their purpose for being there, one of their main questions was:

What kind of American are you?

That sentence alone will tell you just how divided the United States of America became and how, regardless of what or who started the war, there’s enough distrust and discourse between each other to make the union of the United States likely beyond repair in this future iteration of the country. 

So now that we have covered the movie’s most basic strengths, let’s highlight what other portions of this movie helped sell the idea of a second American Civil War to me and heighten the fright factor that comes with such an idea.

To start with, Alex Garland’s writing and directing. Shortly after I saw this movie, I caught on, on my own, how this is the same guy who wrote and directed Ex Machina. What I remember the most about this sci-fi movie is how it presented a seemingly straightforward story, only for it to pull a Sixth Sense on us with its ending, turn it on its head, leave us, the viewers, to reevaluate what we had witnessed, and give us a more thought-provoking angle through which to study and appreciate Ex Machina. 

While not as ingenious as they were in that film, Garland’s strengths in his writing and directing feel affluent here in Civil War. Much like Ex Machina, the plot here is also pretty straightforward, with a team of journalists and photojournalists trying to work their way through all the carnage and chaos from New York City to Washington DC as they attempted to meet the President unharmed and with the tools necessary to pull off the interview they sought to establish with him. However, because it was a war-torn America that they had to plow their way through, there were bound to be some circumstances where it left me on the edge of my seat and uncertain whether certain things that were about to happen were normal or which ones came about as a result of the war. Whereas Ex Machina excelled in its twists, Civil War came close to excelling with its unpredictability. Even though it was said that this took a toll on Alex Garland’s mental health because of the subject matter he dealt with, his direction in this film never wavered and only strengthened its concentration to bring to attention the policies of bringing about a second American Civil War against each other. He also did a good job of seeing to it that the attention was kept on the characters as they lunged forth in the war-torn battlefields to Washington DC while they traveled with eyes in the back of their heads and also tried to see to it that they make it to Washington DC as quickly and safely as possible. Whenever the characters had their quiet moments together, I could’ve felt what little shreds of a friendship or relationship they started to have or have had with them all along spring forth, especially between Jessie and Lee.

While my mind is still fresh on the directing here, I ought to point out one thing. When my girlfriend and I first saw this in theaters, we thought that this movie felt more post-apocalyptic than it did dystopian, let alone like a war movie. Why? Because the dreadful atmosphere that ran rampant throughout the film called us back to a specific zombie show that we were familiar with. To her, it reminded her of The Walking Dead. In my case, it reminded me of The Last of Us, down to Lee and Jessie carrying vibes not unlike Joel and Ellie. Maybe there’s something about watching the characters go on an odyssey as their surroundings succumbed to such a feverish state; the strangers they ran into along the way left me uncertain whether they’d be allies or out for their blood. In one instance, the characters ran into a modest little American town that looked and felt like nothing had ever happened, except for a couple of snipers on the rooftop of one of the nearby buildings. The town citizens functioned like it’s another day in the neighborhood, and they even liked to hunker down and believe that the war outside wasn’t going on. And even if it was going on, as the clothes store owner said, they’d rather lay low and not be involved than be roped into the war for years on end. My girlfriend told me she saw a scenario like that in The Walking Dead.

It’s fascinating to imagine what genre associations we’d make from what we witnessed in this movie. Either way, it felt just like the shows I spoke of, except with more of the outbreak than the zombies.

SPOILER ALERT

It all leads to the climactic finishing battles, which may have ended in tragedy. 

After dealing with the corrupt Americans who disposed of the bodies, Sammy was shot in the crossfire, leaving only Lee, Joel, and Jessie to continue with their journey. Once they finally made it to Washington, DC, it was nothing but constant police cars, helicopters, and tanks all moving about town with explosions and gunfires sounding off from every corner. After meeting up with the Californian and Texan forces, Lee, Joel, and Jessie carefully snuck into the White House with the soldiers in tow. And then, along the way, Jessie took all the photographs she could have of what occurred before her. However, just as one of the people from the White House was about to gun down the soldiers, one of them was about to shoot Jessie before Lee, who had cracked under the constant exposure she dealt with from the war and carnage, leapt out in front of Jessie and took the hit, leaving Jessie and Joel to continue their search for the President’s office. But when they finally reached the President, Joel, in a fit of rage, decided to go ahead and shoot him dead, with Jessie taking the ever-crucial shot to memorialize the execution.

SPOILERS END

Of course, this also introduces us to the one component of this movie that somehow means a lot more to the film than I think people give them credit for: the photographs themselves.

Because this movie is about what would happen if a second American Civil War broke out throughout America, it was established that Lee and now Jessie have had experience going out onto the battlefield and been quick with their fingers as they took snapshots of what occurred in front of them before they got caught in the crossfire next. Every time I looked at these photos, I was reminded by the expression of how pictures are worth a thousand words and how, in an age where news can be easily manipulated to support one’s views, the photos, when taken, do not lie, and whatever occurred in front of them is the real story being told.

But it’s not just the photos. Their styles deserve to be acknowledged as such, too. Because Lee was experienced throughout the battlefield, she’d proven herself adept at taking whatever photos she needed in the heat of the moment, and all of the photos were in color. However, when we see Jessie’s photos and whichever ones she took, they were instead taken in stark black and white. Even Lee was impressed with one of Jessie’s photos of a soldier helping another soldier block the bloodstream before it leaked out of him. As it went on, it demonstrated the pros and follies of each one’s photo styles. Lee’s photos captured the hectic nature of the situation, but they came across as too restrictive because, again, it was taken in the heat of the moment and was thus treated more as modern. Jessie’s photos may not have captured the severity of the situation, but the black-and-white contrast that permeated her photos would have helped us look at them more retrospectively. So, when the last photo that Lee shot in the film came to fruition during the end credits, it slowly transformed into an innermost invitation to introspect the scenarios we witnessed, primarily through the lens of Jessie’s camera. 

If this were to happen in America right now, how would the surviving fragments of America, or even the rest of the world, have reflected on this several decades, if not several centuries, down the line? What would they have thought of us during then? Would we have been just another nation too at war with itself to be self-sustainable for an extended period of time? What would we have done wrong that we could have avoided if we meant to prosper as a nation?

The movie, not just the photos, asks us to look closely at the general issues before we even think of starting a second American Civil War and to be mindful of what people would think of us, not just in the present but many years from now, should something this disastrous ever occur. That’s why I feel the photos serve a special purpose in the movie besides having the main characters be photojournalists and reporters.

But let’s get to the other method that does such notable service to this movie: the acting.

Wagner Moura played Joel with a shred of toughness but also with enough consideration for Lee, Jessie, and Sammy to seek out their needs even as they were lunging continually forth in war-torn America. There’s a part of him that seemed like a playful friend who was aware of the bad things around him but never lost hope. He also willingly took Jessie under his wing even if he was also watching out for her since she was young and a newbie.

Stephen McKinley Henderson, who played Sammy? The amount of tenderness and thoughtfulness he poured out of his character immediately told me how much experience his character had working with The New York Times before disaster struck. The fact that he was among the last people in this country who remembered what bonafide journalism was all about painted him with a hint of tragedy and acquired wisdom. Sammy also acted as the heart and brain behind his traveling team, for he was always giving advice to Joel, Lee, and Jessie, too, especially in the face of danger.

Cailee Spaeny played Jessie Collins with a bit of newcomer excitement but mostly with enough experience and know-how for me to buy into how she was pretty astute and quick with her fingers when it came to war photography. But when she was in the presence of her idol, Lee, I could tell that she was very excited about becoming a photojournalist like her with her. But the farther Jessie went with her friends in the war-torn country, the more frightened she became and the more inclined she felt to back out of whatever disasters occurred before she became yet another victim. Spaeny played Jessie very well, and it hinted at a hardened growth with her when she found out that her friends’ expedition came with far more sacrifices than she was ready to deal with and, even when Jessie least expected it, had to prepare herself for anything and anyone that would’ve jeopardized her life as she also tried to get her photos all squared away for the shooting. 

However, there are two performances from this movie that I’m singling out as its centerpieces.

Let’s start with the leading actress in the film, Kirsten Dunst. Her performance as Lee Smith is probably the strongest in the movie, and I was always amazed by how capable Dunst became as an actress. Whenever I think of her, I usually think back to when she was a famous child star in the 1990s, with her more notable roles including Judy in Jumanji and Kiki in Kiki’s Delivery Service. Sometimes, I remember her as Mary Jane from Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, too. But I am getting the impression that the acting Kirsten Dunst mastered as a young girl seemed to have matured with her. In this film, she displayed Lee with a definite toughness to highlight her experience as a war photographer, and how she was unflinching when it came to getting her photographs all squared away of the horrific occurrences in front of her. At the same time, however, especially as her connections with Jessie demonstrated it, she began to express signs of uncertainty, conflict, and even panic when she started to wonder what good her photos would ever have amounted to and that experiencing the war-torn activities up close and personal may be far more different from looking at them through the lens of a camera.

But the movie’s most memorable and progressively terrifying performance is that of the ironically uncredited Jesse Plemons.

Plemons played a red-tinted-sunglass-wearing soldier who, along with another fellow soldier, disposed of a multitude of bodies. And he played his character most effectively, displaying his uncaring attitude and bloodthirsty tendencies as shown with his quick wit and shooting of whomever he considered inferior Americans. That demonstrated a level of fierceness and terror out of him, and much like some of the actors who played the enemies in this movie, he’d leave viewers uncertain whether he’d let you live or shoot you dead in a second. You can tell that underneath his idle banter and chitchat, there’s an inner psycho who’s prepared to lunge out at the slightest whim and catch everyone off-guard with a bullet to the heart.

It blows my mind, actually. It really does. The last time I saw Kristen Dunst and Jesse Plemons co-starring together, they both played the Blumquists, a humble but skewed and unorganized husband and wife, in Fargo’s second season. But here, the character Jesse Plemons played was more similar to Todd Alquist from Breaking Bad. And both are among my all-time favorite TV shows! I guess you don’t need the chaos of the second American Civil War to dip into the craziness apparent from this film.

If there’s one thing I have mixed feelings about in this movie, it’s the music. On the one hand, the music consisted of rap or general folk music. They all went forth throughout the film with a varied lightness to them, so whenever certain situations went on in the movie that mattered a great deal to the characters, it seemingly undermined the drastic nature and hard-core effects of all that went on throughout the film. It felt even more so during the last half of the film, when the more hellish aspects of war started to trickle into the crosshairs through which the main characters tracked; the music used in these scenes felt more inappropriate as they went on. On the other hand, throughout the movie’s first half, the music played while the main characters were getting started on their journey and Jessie got started with her photo-shooting spree. It highlighted the likelihood that what they were doing was just another regular day on the job since, as Lee demonstrated, being a war photographer means having to be physically present in the scenes of war and taking the right shots from the correct positions at the right time without giving in to the emotional turbulence that comes with being in the battlefield, and an ongoing battlefield at that. And later, once we reached the end credits, the music still maintained the lightness apparent in the film’s first half. This time, it highlighted a more frightening aspect to be considered with what we witnessed in the movie, and that is the fact that all the bloodshed, all the massacres, all the losses, all the mere survival instincts felt by the characters, they were treated like it’s life, like they’ve become the norm rather than a rarity.

What I admire and still find myself respecting about this film is that it came out in April 2024, and at that time, the next Presidential election of the United States was on the horizon. At a time of uncertainty and near rampant crises, the American people were scared and unsure what would become of the country when it was starting to show signs of a societal, social illness that was seemingly not present for many years before then. And wouldn’t you know it? Donald Trump had the misfortune of having his ear pierced by an incoming bullet meant for him three months afterward. It doesn’t matter who it was that almost took such a hit. It makes this movie look like more than just a cautionary tale. It is a cinematic plea for us not to sink to such levels as that where the America shown in Civil War sank. You can say that this movie was meant to function as a de facto flotation device to help us continue to maintain our integrity and well-being as Americans before we lunge into actions, activities, mindsets, convictions, and war-mongering that could so easily tear us as a nation apart. As I’m writing this, the Fourth of July of next year will be America’s 250th anniversary, and we have always relished America’s resilience and strength in the face of war. Look at the Revolutionary War, the first American Civil War, and the two World Wars in which we partook. While there’s still some ongoing debate about the necessities of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the ongoing war we are still waging against the Middle Eastern terrorists, it’s a testament to how resilient and strong we’ve grown to be as a nation. But it’s America’s inner strength that we fear has become subject to potential frailty. And this movie highlights the worst-case scenario that could be possible for us if we give in to the sickness and let the frailty immerse itself throughout all of humanity, not just America. In which case, whereas shows like For All Mankind show us what type of future we could’ve achieved, or those like The Man in the High Castle demonstrate what we should be thankful to have avoided, Civil War is a wake-up call to remind us of what we still have within us that we hold so dear, and not just who we hold so dear to us, and hold onto that tight before we lose it and so that we can avoid planting the seeds that’d sprout into a self-destructive future, as the characters in Civil War did.

Because this film came out as we prepared ourselves for the upcoming Presidential election, Civil War could not have come at a more perfect time, for it raised questions that we needed to hear about the current state of America and what must be done for our country as it is right now not to end up the same way America did in the movie. And it was all brought to life thanks to the film’s in-depth directing, brilliant writing, incredible acting, and some terrifying yet necessary possibilities that may arise out of America deciding to wage war against itself. Over the past several years, with each scandal breaking out or new crime that’s coming forth, we have become more on alert than ever before with the intention of avoiding what we fear could be another catastrophe when, instead, any efforts to do so could likely take us in an even deeper hole than we ever meant or wanted to.

God bless America, and God help those who are uncertain about our country’s future.

My Rating

A low A-