The Civil War director had a two-part agenda for his “apolitical” action film

Alex Garland am asked again and again The same question about his new film, Civil War. That’s an obvious question. Garland, known primarily for Ex Machina, destructionAnd Men, wrote and directed a film set in near-future America that revolves around a civil war that has divided the United States – and yet it reveals very little about how that war came about or what the warring parties represent. Instead, he tells an almost clinical procedural action story about photojournalists crisscrossing the country to cover this war, without ever going into the details. Why make a seemingly apolitical film about an American civil war at a time when there are so many experts? are worried that was on the edge from real civil war?

Garland disagrees with the basis of the question. “I can’t imagine how abstract it should be,” he said in an interview before the film’s release. “[In Civil War] There is a fascist president who has dismantled the constitution to the extent that he can remain in office for three terms, who has removed one of the legal institutions that could endanger his position by using it to cause violence and attack his own citizens. At first glance it may seem abstract – but for me it doesn’t stand up to closer examination in terms of the actual content of the film.”

However, this description sounds much more direct than the film actually seems. The details mentioned above are all things that the viewer only gets from short, isolated lines of dialogue. As Garland says, the details come “largely through inference” and are not the main focus of the film.

Instead, the film focuses on the world-weary world-weariness of veteran photojournalist Lee Miller (Kirsten Dunst) and her writing partner Joel (Wagner Moura) as they travel across the United States to Washington, DC to interview the embattled president (Nick Offerman). Also there: the aspiring young photojournalist Jessie (Priscilla star Cailee Spaeny). The film focuses on their emotional reactions to the things they see on the journey – Lee’s growing trauma, Joel’s adventurous bravado, Jessie’s naive excitement. But the characters never talk about politics or the lines that have been drawn across America.

And that’s entirely intentional, Garland says, because he wants the film to be as politically objective as it could be. “The kind of journalism we need most — the reporting that used to be the dominant form of journalism — had a conscious elimination of a certain kind of bias,” he told us. “If you have a news organization that has a strong bias, probably only the choir it preaches to will trust it and the others will distrust it. So that was something that journalists used to actively, consciously and consciously try to avoid. […] And then the film tries to function like these journalists. So this is a throwback to an old form of journalism, in the way that journalism is told.”

Reading between the lines, it seems clear enough that Garland didn’t want to upset potential viewers by framing the plot Civil War It’s about the conflict itself and not the consequences of that conflict. And there are many lines in his film that you can read between; Garland reiterated that he uses films to initiate conversations, not to dictate answers. But that doesn’t mean he thinks the film is vague or hesitant when it comes to condemning fascism and warning about America’s political direction.

“The question is, will it be marked in the way that cinema usually marks these things?” he asks. “I would accept that this is not the case.”

So the problem probably lies less with how Civil War presents its central conflict and more about the current nature of American political conversation, where Every possible individual human decision is now a political oneand these decisions were polarized in only two sides. It is not surprising that viewers entering an American film called Civil War In 2024, one would expect a edgier, angrier and more direct film about the country’s dividing lines. But that’s not what Garland was aiming for in the first place.

“That happens a lot when I’m working on a film,” Garland says. “There’s something that’s really about – so I think Ex Machina, you could say it really looks like Turing tests. But it is not Really about Turing tests. They’re there and that’s the engine, but that’s not really the intent of the film.”

So what does Garland see? Civil Waris the primary agenda? “It would be a list of things,” he says. “A very simple option, which would perhaps only work on a subconscious level, is to make journalists heroes. When I said I was going to do that, a friend of mine in the film industry said, “Don’t do that, everyone hates journalists.” And it really stung me. I see journalists as a necessity. To me, saying “everyone hates journalists” is just like saying “everyone hates doctors.”.’ You tilt You hate doctors lost without doctors. That’s just a crazy position to maintain!”

Garland blames the rise in anti-journalism sentiment on “politicians intentionally undermining the institutions of journalism” and on biased media companies undermining the idea of ​​news journalism – both problems in themselves but which, he believes, lead to attitudes against journalists scary and alarming.

“So part of the agenda would just be subtle [positive message about journalists],” he says. “Listen, it’s about fucking picking up a grain of sand and throwing it in a big pile, but I’m going to pick up the grain of sand and throw it in the pile, right? That’s the movie. One thing would be to subtly reposition journalists. […] We need journalists – not as a luxury or as entertainment or as some kind of vague commentary, but as an actual social necessity.”

Part two of his agenda, however, goes back to the idea of ​​making a film with journalistic objectivity, in the hope that it leaves both sides of the political spectrum something to discuss – and something to agree on. It is no coincidence that in Civil WarTwo of the separatist states, Texas and California, have joined forces against a president who is actively working to dismantle democracy. While Garland is careful about how he puts this, it sounds like he’s hoping that Americans can at least agree that autocracy would be ruinous for the country and that both political parties should oppose it.

“I know what my politics are,” he says. “And I know what happens when I talk about politics with someone who doesn’t agree with me. I don’t have to finish a sentence because they already know my argument. When two people yell at each other, nothing happens. There is a kind of standstill – but it turns out that it is not a standstill, but a standstill [us] Drifting apart. Hopefully, in my dream of all dreams, [Civil War] would allow people to think about the divergence and what points of division or disagreement are actually worth dividing on – because the division could have more serious consequences than the thing on which they disagreed.”

But Civil War I cannot express this point openly without preaching it to the audience. And Garland doesn’t want to preach. While he says journalists play a special role in society and “hold governments to account,” his film “fits into a vaguer zone.”

“A film works a little differently,” he says. “It’s not journalism, it’s fiction. So the function of a film […] would be to provoke – not in an antagonistic way, but a causal Way – to initiate a thought process and exchange.”

And most importantly, he wants to get people talking about authoritarianism and autocracy in person, not online, through news outlets or in the media. “Personally, I’m less interested in the current form of public discourse because I think it’s so problematic,” he says. “I’m much more interested in individuals. That’s what I’m focused on.” Individually and personally, he says, conversations can potentially be less divisive and provocative than those on social media and mainstream media.

“That would be a very big hope, but that is my hope,” he says. “I won’t mark it. Because I don’t want to give lectures. I just want to offer something. That’s it.”