Civil War Movie Review

I went to the theaters to see Civil War in the first week of May, the day after the last performance of the Gilman Spring Musical, Something Rotten! It was my first free evening in weeks. I was up for proper entertainment, some lightening of the busy institutional load off my shoulders. I decided to go watch a movie about a modern-day American Civil War  (not the actual one with Abraham Lincoln).

Civil War troubled me during its first 45 minutes not because of the heavy moral messaging, but because I worried it was not a good movie. It seemed that the 21st-century American Civil War was only a backdrop for a stereotypical mentor-apprentice story between famous war photographer Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and an ambitious nobody Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). There were no politics (a chief complaint of audiences), no references to 2020s current events, and not even a clear distinction between sides in the war. With Director Alex Garland being British and not a US citizen, I wondered about him making light of America’s troubles so much that he takes them for granted as fodder for a story setting and nothing more. As the movie continued, my view gradually shifted.

Garland’s movie is not a political examination, it’s an examination of the nature of humans, unconcerned with institutions, unbothered by appearing cliché. The story is not a new one, nor are the characters more than players in the game. But the drama of the scenes, the intense focus on agony and anger and hurt, followed immediately by wider shots showing the scale of destruction, communicate a greater feeling than most films with impressive stories and protagonists. It’s an unsettled feeling which settles into your soul and prompts your own existential self-examination. That seems to be the goal of Garland’s career; with this newest film, he has applied his vision on the largest scale as of yet.

Alex Garland is known for his 2014 Ex Machina and his 2018 Annihilation, both of which flirt with themes of self-destruction and feature humans as impersonal representations of dissatisfaction searching for more. Both are depressing films that drag your brain into their realm of existential questions and lost faith in humanity (the films are very much post-World Wars). Ex Machina uses artificial life to explore what makes humanity ‘worth it.’ To make the same point, Annihilation features an extraterrestrial corruption of nature to ask if corruption is only change that humans refuse and deem negative; and if the corruption and total change of humans’ existence might not be so bad after all. I have seen both films and I am especially a fan of Annihilation, in which the supernatural beauty of changing nature prevails over the human question. The beauty of corruption answers ‘Are we as we are really worth it?’ with: ‘Why refuse the change?’

Civil War is not as thematically interesting as Annihilation, because it leans away from the art piece and into the standardly plotted blockbuster. But Garland impressively keeps his theme of self-destruction intact throughout. His ambition was to capture the flat, suicidal condition of humanity portrayed in his other movies without the use of impossibly real artificial intelligence, or an unfathomable Lovecraftian force from outer space, or a zombie-breeding plague (Garland wrote 28 Days Later). Here, Garland uses the civil war setting that is all too present in today’s America to convey his themes through a less fictional lens.

While the thematic focus of the movie doesn’t lie with its main characters, most of the movie’s screen time is with their story. They don’t fall flat. Dunst’s character becomes quite likable as the war veteran. Wagner Moura as Joel, Dunst’s journalism partner, is entertaining and unpredictable; and the tremendous character actor Stephen Henderson appears and furnishes the movie with its most heart-wrenching and personal moment. No character is a viewpoint character for us, but each participates in their own struggle as we watch and mourn and laugh. 

We laugh because there is a surprising amount of humor in the movie that comes and then passes by without announcing and overstaying its welcome; something for which audiences should be thankful. Civil War, though its experience is so mind-twisting that by the end your thoughts only linger on the existentialist questions it raises, is a thrilling, fun, and emotional film as well as your personal harbinger of bleakness. A good movie can accomplish so much. Civil War will make an impression on you. 

If you watch it at Warehouse Cinemas at the Rotunda, you might get an empty theater to yourself, as I almost did (a row of college kids came in as I was singing along to the previews). I would suggest watching it. It might be the film that triggers your appreciation for the media. It will make you ask questions. But don’t expect a political film. And seriously, why would you want one?