Civil War upsets expectations to deliver a poetic, personal meditation on war and trauma

I couldn’t help but brace myself as the movie Civil War cold opens on a speech by its Trump-esque, unnamed third term dictator president played by Nick Offerman, particularly since I was watching on the Monday after the second attempted assassination of former president Trump, but Offerman doesn’t do an Orange Man imitation and is clean shaven and silver haired. Instead, he reminded me more of another scandal-soaked president named Clinton. You’d expect a Hollywood movie to take a swing and Trump and conservatives. Civil War does and it doesn’t. At every turn the movie makes interesting, unexpected choices with how it portrays a contemporary military conflict between Americans. And a film that might have only supported the elite establishment, parroting the predictable talking points of neoliberal imperialism, instead does something smarter and more poetic.

Civil War focuses on a van full of journalists who are covering the civil unrest, bombings and battles taking place after California and Texas secede from the country and form the Western Forces. Another separatist movement from Florida is also in active combat with the U.S. military. There are also allusions to Maoist factions creating conflicts in the Midwest. I assumed Civil War would follow strict DNC narratives about the threat of right wing violence, but instead, to its credit, the rendering of America in Civil War is much more complicated than that. And as the two bizarre, real world assassination attempts against Trump have demonstrated, Civil War is actually a much more realistic film than it was given credit for when it debuted in theaters this summer. If America does experience a civil war, it will be much more messy and unpredictable than Red versus Blue.

Kirsten Dunst plays a famous war photographer named Lee Smith. She’s a hard-bitten witness of decades of global conflicts — a celebrated image-maker haunted by the trauma of her experiences. Joel (Wagner Moura) is a writer trying to get to DC to interview the president before he’s murdered by surging revolutionary forces. Stephen McKinley is great as an aged veteran journo who’s still publishing his stories at “what’s left of The New York Times.” And Jesse (Cailee Spaeny) is an aspiring young photographer who idolizes Lee and is way out of her depth as the group crosses the country between military checkpoints and militia outposts where vigilantes dole out frontier justice according to their own whims. The dollar has collapsed into hyperinflation and $300 will buy a gas station sandwich. The whole group carries credentials and wear day glow vests with “Press” labeling, but journalists are considered enemy combatants by the embattled establishment. Civil War’s protagonists are effectively a platoon without guns winding their way through an endless war zone.

Director Alex Garland is best known for movies like Ex Machina (2014) and Men (2022). Both those movies were suffused with a haunting atmosphere and Garland brings a quiet brooding meditative mood to this war film. There’s lots of use of still imagery and long silent sequences accompanied only by the sounds of camera shutters opening and closing. Cameras pan slowly though chaos and gore, and drone shots capture endless miles of empty highway. Civil War is a film about how the soldiers and journalists who are drawn to war can find life-affirming purpose in the midst of death and destruction. And its biggest surprise is that it’s a personal movie disguised as a political film.

Civil War is now streaming on MAX

Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.

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