NEW YORK (AP) â Alex Garlandâs films have vividly conjured a virus-caused pandemic (2002's â28 Days Laterâ), an uncontrollable artificial intelligence (2014âs âEx Machinaâ) and, in his latest, a near-future America in the throes of all-out warfare.
Most filmmakers with such a record might claim some knack for tapping into the zeitgeist. But Garland doesnât see it that way. Heâs dealing, he says, with omnipresent realities that demand no great leaps of vision. He wrote âCivil War" in 2020, when societies around the world were unraveling over and the prospect of societal breakdown was on everyoneâs minds.
âThat was pretty deafening back then,â Garland says. âSo in a way, itâs slightly past zeitgeist. Itâs actually oppressive.â
âCivil Warâ is an ominous attempt to turn widely held American anxieties into a violent, unsettling big-screen reality. Garlandâs film opens Friday â the anniversary, to the day, of when the Civil War began in 1861. And it's landing in movie theaters just months ahead of , making it potentially Hollywoodâs most explosive movie of the year.
For months, the arrival of âCivil Warâ has been closely tracked as numerous trailers have drummed up intrigue. Texas and California aligned? âScience fiction,â wrote one commentor. Another said: âThis single movie had the best 8 year marketing campaign of all time.â
Yet âCivil Warâ is something far more oblique than its matter-of-fact title. The film, which Garland wrote and directed, isnât mapped directly against todayâs polarization. In a war thatâs already ravaged the country, California and Texas have joined forces against a fascist president (Nick Offerman) whoâs seized a third term and disbanded the FBI.
A band of journalists (Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura) makes its way toward Washington, D.C. Much of the filmâs disquiet comes from seeing visceral encounters of war â bombings, fire fights and executions â on contemporary American soil. ("Civil War," to take advantage of tax breaks, was mostly shot in Georgia.) For everyone who has in recent years wondered âHow bad can it get?â â here is a sobering answer.
âWhen things collapse, the speed at which they collapse tends to surprise people â including people like intelligence officers whose job is to watch and predict when these things will happen,â Garland said in a recent interview. âThings are always in a slightly more dangerous state than they might appear.â
The rapidity with which society can disintegrate has long fascinated Garland, the 53-year-old British born filmmaker who emerged with the screenplay to the zombie apocalypse thriller â28 Days Later.â Western democracies, he says, can lean too much on their sense of exceptionalism. To him, âCivil Warâ isnât an act of cynicism. Itâs a warning shot.
âThe consequences of it are so serious that to not take the threat seriously would, itself, be another kind of insanity,â says Garland. âIt would just be complacent.â
In past election seasons, Hollywood has sometimes looked to channel, reflect or capitalize or political discord. Ahead of the 2020 election, Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions released âThe Hunt,â a âMost Dangerous Gameâ riff in which liberals kidnap ârednecksâ and âdeplorablesâ to hunt on a private preserve. After the film became engulfed in right-wing criticism (then-President Trump said it was âmade in order to inflame and cause chaosâ), When âThe Huntâ eventually hit theaters in March 2020, it revealed
While there have been questioning the appropriateness of the timing for âCivil War,â controversy hasnât yet clung to it. That might be owed to Garlandâs approach. There are few direct allusions to the deepest fissures of American politics today in the film. Joining Texas and California together removes any âblue stateâ vs. âred stateâ dichotomy. Neither race nor income inequality appear as issues of division. The president's political party is unspecified.
âI had never read a script like this,â said Dunst at . âAnd I had never seen a film like this.â
âCivil War,â set in a near-future, instead plays out with more subtle connections to today's fractured politics and cultural splits. Jesse Plemons plays a heinous militant who interrogates the main characters, asking them: âWhat kind of American are you?â Though it's never seen, Charlottesville, Virginia â site of â is referred to as a battle front.
Asked about that choice, Garland replies: âThe film is just reporting."
But the director acknowledges finding the right balance was a challenge.
âYes, it was a (expletive) delicate balance,â Garland says. âWe thought about it, we discussed it, we talked about what was appropriate. Look, the plan is to make a compelling and engaging film, and the product of the compelling and engaging film is a conversation. So the questions are: How do you make sure that youâre not dismantling a conversation in the first part of that equation?â
That led to Garland foregrounding âCivil Warâ with journalists. As much as anything, Garland's film is about the central role reporters play in capturing critical events in lethal conditions. Unbiased reporting, Garland says, has been eroded. In âCivil War,â it's literally under attack.
âWhat I wanted to do was present journalists as reporters," Garland says. âThey may be conflicted, they may be compromised as individuals, but theyâre holding on to an idea of journalism.â
âCivil War,â which cost $50 million to make, is the largest budgeted film yet from A24. The indie studio is pushing to expand its reach beyond arthouses ("Civil War" will play on IMAX screens) and expand the reach of its critical acclaimed films. âCivil Warâ is, ironically, a bid to draw wider audiences.
âA lot of the boldness is not actually mine,â says Garland. âI think it belongs to A24. You would find there are always people attempting to make these films. The question is whether theyâve been given the support to make them.â
âCivil Warâ is just a possibility, the director stresses, not a prediction. Still, months after he finished writing it, Garland watched an insurrection play out on live television when . At the time, his thoughts weren't on his script.
âWhat I had was this incredibly intense feeling that this is a disgrace,â says Garland. âLater, as time went by, some of that anger fed into the project. Not so much in terms of rewriting scenes or dialogue or anything. But more to do with an internal sense of motivation. Something that felt more distant felt less distant.â
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This story first moved April 9, 2024, and was updated on April 16, 2024, to remove a reference to a poll.
Jake Coyle, The Associated Press
