The fire scene in Civil War worried the director because it was too good

Although Alex Garland’s near-future disaster film Civil War Set during an American uprising aimed at forcing an autocratic, democracy-destroying president from power, it focuses more on the journalists covering the war than on who is fighting who. Garland says he made this decision because he wanted the story to be about why reporters are a crucial part of a functioning society. The same agenda also shaped the appearance of Civil War: The film is largely seen through the eyes of two photojournalists, the experienced Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) and the young reporter Jessie (Cailee Spaeny). Their focus on capturing the perfect image made it important for Civil War be visually striking.

A particularly standout scene comes late in the film, when Lee, her reporting partner Joel (Wagner Moura), and Jessie drive in silence through a burning forest, one of the casualties of the war. The characters exchange grim, weary glances in the orange-lit darkness as fires burn around them. It’s a beautifully shot scene and Polygon asked Garland how he approached shooting it on camera.

“There’s an easy answer to that because I’ve never been on the shot list,” Garland told us. “I never come to set with a plan. There are complicated reasons for this, usually having to do with acting and not wanting to tell an actor where to sit. I don’t want to say, “Stand at the window because I have a great opportunity.” If they don’t want to stand at the window, then I have a problem with the actor, a kind of unnecessary tension. I’ve never seen a scene where the actors don’t do what they want and it’s impossible to shoot. So I’m not worried about shot lists.”

Instead, he spoke to the SFX team about what he wanted for the sequence, and he said they told him, “‘We’ll do it.’ We know exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to try something that hasn’t existed before. Trust us.’

“That’s always my favorite thing to hear about a department,” laughs Garland.

According to Garland, when he arrived to film the sequence, the effects team had set up a series of artificial trees in the forest that were rigged to produce flames at the push of a button. “There was a fire department and big hoses ready to put out anything if it got out of control,” he says. “But what was really magical was that there was a truck right in front of the hero vehicle with the actors. And in the back of the truck was a large metal cylinder that they had created that was generating tremendous heat, like you would in an oven or a pizza oven.”

According to Garland, the team demonstrated how they used dry charcoal to create the flares and curtains of bright embers that would rain down on the car during filming. “They’re all there in fireproof suits and visors and big, heavy gloves,” he says. “And they would throw away these bundles of charcoal sticks [into the cylinder]. In this heat they immediately exploded into a shower of sparks. I can honestly say this was the most hypnotically beautiful thing I have ever seen on a film set. It was a completely practical effect and it was dizzying.”

Ironically, it initially made Garland uncomfortable that the effect worked so well. “At first it caused a wave of fear: What if we can’t do these pictures justice?” he says. “[Cinematographer Rob Hardy] and I really struggled in the first moments – that is, the first 45 minutes or so – because it felt transcendent and beyond us. And then we relaxed and realized that this is not a magical moment. These guys are capable of doing this over and over again and we should just calm down and find the right means. And we gradually started putting the sequence together. So the credit there really goes to the SFX team.”

Civil War is now in the cinema.