Civil War

 

If you’ve seen some of the news lately, you’ve likely been informed about an election this fall. And if you’ve seen any news over the last fifteen years, you’ve likely been informed about an increasingly divided nation on the brink of its self-destruction, maybe eager for civil war, making each subsequent election the most important one yet. 

 

Whether you believe this or not is not the main concern of the recent A24-produced film Civil War; its director Alex Garland clearly couldn’t care less. Civil War seeks to evoke the media attention of the times and show our greatest fears of a collapsed nation in fury. However, the film’s grand spectacle of violence and hatred is burdened by its simplicity and assuages our fears of the future in favor of maintaining the status quo.

 

I saw Civil War when it was released in April of this year and have no plans to sit through it again, (now streaming on Max.) But its superficiality has captivated me. It takes on the great task of showing the imagination of America under a fascist ruler, played in a brief role by Nick Offerman. How can one portray the revolt against a tyrannical figure in the country we live in, giving us the familiarity of land but the unfamiliarity of revolution? The short answer is that Garland avoids portraying it. 

 

Our story is filtered through the experiences of journalists. We follow a group of them, most of them experienced and one young newcomer, on their way to try and get an interview with the president before he is finally disposed of by the swarming rebellion. They must travel together through much of the country, giving us glimpses of the chaos and dangers wherever they stop.

 

We are thrown into the middle of one such stop, witnessing a skirmish between two groups of soldiers, although we don’t know who is who and which side is which. We don’t need to know who is getting shot, or even if they’re good or bad; we are only supposed to condescend ourselves to react to the spectacle’s onslaught of gunshots and noise. Moments like these in the film where we don’t know the sides of things is an intentional decision by Garland to put us into the place of our mostly neutral protagonists. Garland, after all, has described the film as “a love letter to journalists.” 

 

The scene in the film I still have in mind exaggerates the shift to neutrality with a De La Soul needle drop. Garland claims this decision “was to be jarring and aggressive” and “to make this not seem like a good idea to have a civil war, but a bad idea.” I can agree that the music is jarring, but only in a slight way that demonstrates the film’s striving for contemporaneity. Garland has no touch for the current state of American polarization, so his neutrality ends up as careless detachment committed to the spectacle of war, even if he thinks otherwise. This detachment is formed by a laziness of imagination—a willful laziness—that naively preaches its depictions as the worst of all possible words. As a result, it seems to say that as long as we’re not in a catastrophic scenario such as this one, everything is fine and fixable: No civil war, no worries.

 

At the end of the film (with spoilers impending), the journalists follow soldiers into the White House who are hunting down the president in a climactic sequence. Immediately before, decoy cars were sent out the front of the White House to try and throw off the attackers. After going through many hallways and doors, the president’s execution is captured on camera. I am not concerned with the photographing of the event because the film has nothing to say about it. Instead, I was more struck by the execution taking place in the Oval Office because there is no thought of an underground. There is no attempted escape through the White House’s tunnels or even a basement because that would imply the film itself has some underground that cannot immediately be felt. It is a suspension of disbelief pushed too far, humiliating the fantasy of the director because his desire for cheap spectacle is illuminated. 

 

Transit

 

Civil War poses an issue of how to effectively show contemporary fascism in cinema because of its gimmicky and clean form. Transit, on the other hand, a 2018 film of a man trying to get the proper documentation to flee Europe, is a much more interesting and effective embodiment of a fascist state, blurring the lines between fiction and history.

 

It is immediately unique because of how it embraces its qualities as being adapted from a 1944 novel of the same name. The novel is by Anna Seghers, a communist who herself was arrested by the Gestapo, eventually securing passage and fleeing to Mexico, where she wrote Transit. 

 

Although the book takes place during the second world war while France is becoming increasingly occupied by the Nazis, the film is set in the 21st century. In the film, the Nazis are hardly seen and not identifiable by any emblems, which could abhor some who view it as erasure. But the presence of fascism is still felt as a closing force as our protagonist goes through the bureaucratic systems trying to get the proper documentation, a transit visa. The lack of a recognizable Nazi heightens the backdrop of distrust and the seeming universality of fascism closing in.  

 

I hesitate to say too much about the film (streaming on Prime Video and free on Tubi) as it is best considered on one’s own, but its material is backed by context that elevates it above the mere depiction of fictional fascism.