Civil War

After Ex Machina and Annihilation, this is my third encounter with Alex Garland's directorial work, which, as with the aforementioned films, tells a story from the more or less near future - but this time in a more contemporary and realistic vein, which makes you shiver all the more. The plot is a simple road movie with action interludes where the main characters are confronted with disturbing scenes from "everyday life in the USA". I liked the audiovisual execution, with photographs of the journalists inserted into the picture, and the background music, which seemed to soften the horrors depicted with its friendly country overtones. The most uncomfortable sequence for me was undoubtedly the confrontation with Jesse Plemons. Visually, I was most impressed by the passage through the burning forest; and in terms of action, I liked the thrilling finale the most. A solid four stars! (21/04/2024)

Recall the three year old event when the Trump mob stormed the Capitol. Alex Garland sensitively and thoughtfully directs this theme, this societal schism, into disconnected mini-stories, with just these aforementioned protagonists (and they don't need a buffalo head to do it) killing because "real fucking America", all of which the protagonists, journalists, follow on their way to Washington. As long it stays in the road movie waters, with lots of iconic scenes, it's great. Unfortunately, Garland flips the switch at the end, and with the arrival in D.C., it becomes a regular war movie that felt like a mannerism in its denouement and showdown. Not only did it leave me cold at the end, but I actually thought "and that's it, Alex?". Too bad, we had the build-up to the movie event of the year, and well, it's not. But still an honest 4 stars (no stripes) for the impressive heaviness and disillusionment with humanity in the first two thirds. (19/04/2024)

A violent nightmare that I dreamed for some unknown reason. Kind of like Children of Men from Wish. Garland somewhat mechanically adorns his shady road movie with random images of a broken America. A number of them are impressive, with powerful visuals and staging (mainly the scene with Jesse Plemons). The film manages to induce anxiety to the point of nausea from a cruel world that is not so far from The Walking Dead in its absence of morality and prevalence of brutality. But…the whole thing seems terribly gratuitous; for all of the questions that the film wants to raise, Garland’s work just shrugs its shoulders and wagers on another spectacular composition. The characters are flat and the ethics and psychology of the war reporters come across as very superficial research. There is little in the way of Nietzschean gazing into the abyss in this film, which paradoxically comes across as terribly thesis-based and illustrative, but it isn’t at all clear what its thesis is or what it actually illustrates. An impressive exercise in unclearly straddling the line between a skilfully made spectacle and a not so skilfully rendered metaphor of a divided country. It’s actually a reiteration of my problem with Garland, a maker of spectacular movies that are dull at their core. (15/04/2024)

For Alex Garland, Civil War is a return to the tried-and-tested formula of a group of characters wandering through an "inhuman" landscape in pursuit of a vague goal, but compared to 28 Days Later, Annihilation and Sunshine, the British filmmaker is now dealing with a rather down-to-earth and quite realistic scenario. I've always seen him as a very capable genre filmmaker and I also got what I expected from his latest effort: a solid simple genre film; don't expect anything complicated or deep. The relative straightforwardness actually suits Garland far more than the artsy symbolism of his previous two efforts, which is also not to say that Civil War completely resigns itself to it. If I have one criticism, it's some all-too-obvious visual choices, in a film that, given the premise, would be best served by a straightforward and almost documentary-like approach, the director too often tries to frame the characters in all symmetry in the middle of the frame, as if they were in a Wes Anderson film, and it doesn't quite fit the concept. On the other hand, I appreciate that Garland didn't reach for some low-hanging fruit in the script and somehow politicised the film in a one-sided way at its core, so we get a story that is balanced and, most importantly, not black-and-white. (16/04/2024)

Texas' revolt has done Civil War some fine advertising and A24 can celebrate. Alex Garland is keeping his head down with the script and direction. The artistic arrangement is there, but he still focuses on the rawness, underscored by black-and-white photography by up-and-comer Cailee Spaena (the kid from DEVS), and serves up a classic road movie through the disunited states of America. The scariest stop along the way is the one at Jesse Plemons, and it towers over the entire film like the top of the Everest. I understand why Garland doesn't explicitly state the reason for the conflict, though it is implied, but I missed that very conversation whose absence Wagner Moura laments. The excellent Wagner Moura, by the way, easily nudges the brooding Kirsten Dunst. The finale is predictable but formally breathtaking. Great soundtrack. (22/04/2024)