In 1936, Sinclair Lewis, witnessing the rise of Fascism in Europe, wrote It Can’t Happen Here. The dystopian novel follows the rise of a Hitler-like figure in the United States, warning the isolationist new world they were not immune to to totalitarianism.
Decades later Civil War (2024), directed by Alex Garland, again challenges the exceptionalist narrative that Americans are safe from war and institutional decay. Following experienced correspondent Joel (Wagner Moura) and photojournalist Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and their protegeé Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny), we track rebel armies led by California and Texas under the banner of the ‘Western Forces’ as their edge closer to Washington DC and America’s President. While impossible to avoid projecting contemporary polarisation and the upcoming election, the film’s greatest strength is the hyper-realistic depiction of America at war and the nature of modern total war itself.
Garland explicitly did not want the civil war to be viewed from a modern political lens. By uniting states on the polar opposite of the political spectrum and giving almost no details about how the war began, he attempts to take the audience where “nobody is immune.” Questions subsequently arise about factors such as the formation of the Western forces, the sentiment of the general public and more importantly, what would be the international community’s response to a civil war unfolding across the United States? Besides vague references to the dismantling of the FBI, firing on American citizens, and other abuses of power, the President himself is also never examined as a villain. There is a sense of inevitability the rebellion will succeed but the journalists never take a side— and neither can the audience.
Many reviews criticised the lack of context. The New York Post argued the film would not endure “because it does not explicitly address this moment. We as a people cannot fix a problem we cannot name.” This fails to distinguish between a film about Americans at war and the specific conflict some predict is on the way. In The New York Times Manohla Dargis noted that the best quality of the film was its exposing “a nation’s soul-sickness,” and that division is exposed by examining how Americans act toward each other. Garland is wrong in that his film could be set anywhere.
Modern cinema is full of Americans at war in other countries. From Vietnam, to Iraq and Afghanistan, the imagery of soldiers shooting M16s backed by tanks and helicopters is ubiquitous. However, depicting American civilians living in a war zone is not a familiar sight within the genre of war films.
Seeing Joel and Lee glaze over refugee camps run by the “World Relief Fund” in Pennsylvania and mass graves filled with white suburbia as they pass through country towns is chilling. Lee takes photos of American ‘refugees’ moving along cracked highways while Joel weaves through abandoned SUVs. The only time Americans suffer this much on screen there is an unimaginable force like a zombie apocalypse or alien invasion. By depicting death as caused by men donning stars and banners on their fellow citizens, the filmmakers flip the script on Western audiences who rarely have to consider the structures of their society shattering.
Beyond the destruction, Garland’s representation of how the population redefines itself in an attempt to rationalise the war strikes at the heart of America’s national character. Lee and Joel drive through a town where life continues as normal, a clothes store employee dismissing the war happening just miles away. Many characters start defining themselves by their state and local militias patrol gas stations. Turning inwards with apathy and a reemergence of localism, Garland argues, is a consequence of war outside of the battles.
Other aspects of American culture such as the ‘pan-am’ or overly joyful smile, start to look absurd. When staying in a fancy hotel, Lee is told by a crisp receptionist that the elevator was broken because of a “power outage.” “Sorry ma’am, “ he says, putting on the classic sales voice before directing her to the stairs.
The varied responses to war also reflect a nuanced desire to represent the irony of conflict. Modern war films tend to abuse their large budgets, creating excessive combat sequences in an attempt to shock or excite audiences. The admission that some people can continue normal lives with fighting on their doorstep is a reminder that war is never fair and it’s terror, never consistent.
The production of the film succeeds by mirroring the tactics of modern warfare, and not exaggerating battle sequences. Ammunition is used copiously, but hardly anyone is hit. Sound design is also carefully considered – many war movies opt for cartoonish battle sound effects; Civil War opts for almost deafening gunshots. The first active combat depicted in the film is a chaotic, small-scale encounter between rebel forces donning Hawaiian shirts and government troops. Soldiers communicate with each other; rather than the manufactured “cool” chaos of a typical Hollywood war film, these characters are allowed to be terrified as they try to stay alive.
The battle of Washington DC continues this theme on a far larger scale. A handful of soldiers hold up an army at a choke-point outside the White House. We don’t see massive troop movements, or hundreds of tanks rolling across open plains; instead, we see small moments in a broader tapestry. A handful of soldiers move methodically through a landscape of flying lead – there are no heroic charges or doomed last stands. Instead, the Western Forces move slowly and carefully, communicating professionally – while the last Government diehards crumple silently in the corridors of the White House. When heroics are attempted – like a Secret Service man attempting to slide across a desk, they are instantly dismissed. It is the muted nature of this combat that gives the film its realistic edge.
That hyperrealism has been criticised for at points disproportionately displaying the on-screen victims of war as people of colour. During one of Lee’s ‘foreign’ war flashbacks, a Black man is shown being burned alive but when the white characters die, the camera lingers less and we are not forced to confront the sights of their bodies. Even what is arguably the best and most tense scene in the film — enter Jesse Plemons as a bloodthirsty soldier — results in people of colour being killed, while the white characters narrowly escape. Plemon’s performance was brilliant and the racialized murders could very well be intentional on part of the filmmakers, however, it is fair to argue the film did not handle these deaths with tact.
When watching the film, it’s hard to miss what some have called a Hollywood love letter to journalism. Positioning the readers to conflate journalism with neutrality or objectivity is not necessarily incorrect, but was thinly explained. Garland ignores that journalists — and their editors — choose what to include in coverage and what to omit. We see that briefly when Lee deletes photographs off her camera, but it seemed more so she could avoid seeing that violent imagery again. Additionally, besides wanting to interview the President (Nick Offerman) we don’t know what they want to achieve with the interview.
Capturing great photos is not a crime, but that is only one element to a profession which requires so much chasing up, research, writing, editorialising, editing and discussion. The reality that anyone can take a photograph remains unaddressed, especially as we are seemingly placed under the impression that journalists must remain detached from the subjects of these images. Even if they believe that even if they disagree with a situation they are witnessing, they recognise their duty as truth-tellers, as seen during the gas station sequence where Lee takes a photograph of two victims hanging after having been tortured, with the perpetrator.
The structure of the film serves as an allegory for the obtuse dehumanisation journalism professes to thrust upon its adherents. The plot moves from sequence to sequence – neither the protagonists nor the audience can afford to dwell on any one moment. In this way, perhaps Garland is asking us to question the detachment present in journalism as a discipline. In the climactic moments of the film, the journalists are forced to use agency – both in the vehicular murder employed in the mass grave scene, and Kirsten Dunst’s final sacrifice in the White House. In these moments we are shown that journalists must address their positionality and responsibility in the events they are a part of, even if just as witnesses – and that we all have some level of agency in terms of how we respond.
Tom Wolfe quipped that “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe.” Despite never pinpointing the cause of decline, Garland implicitly questions that view by focusing on making the conflict feel so real. Whether it becomes an omen or just a warning, remains to be seen.