Assembled: Civil War Edition
I've been thinking about Alex Garland's latest movie... kind of a lot!
“Civil War” is the latest film from British filmmaker Alex Garland (Ex Machina, Annihilation, DEVS). It depicts a near-future civil war in an America that has divided itself into four factions - the New People’s Army Alliance (basically the Pacific Northwest), the Florida Alliance (most of the Southern states), the Western Forces (improbably, the Texas-California alliance) and the Loyalist states (everyone else). The film is A24’s second most-profitable film of all time, having passed Talk to Me this weekend on its way to $100 million globally (Everything, Everywhere All at Once made over $140 million).
The film has an 82% on Rotten Tomatoes but for a film about the most divided America it’s generated surprisingly little conversation. That in and of itself I have found super interesting - enough so that I wrote and talked about it in a couple of places. Here are my takes on the film. I’d love to hear yours too!
Article
“‘Civil War’ Highlights the False God of Neutrality” for Sojourners
This article was a beast to write. Navigating neutrality can be surprisingly fraught - even when writing an opinion piece. Publications like Sojourners have to be really careful when talking about things like the January 6 Insurrection.
My editor Jenna worked with me through several drafts of this piece (which ended up being a lot longer than the typical word count too). Overall, I’m really pleased with how it came out.
A lot of us who were underwhelmed by Civil War criticize it for being so ruthlessly apolitical. It’s a temptation a lot of us American Christians have toward centrism, and it is incredibly detrimental to our ability to embody Jesus’ example in our present moment. Centrism feels like a virtue, but it’s not. Jesus wasn’t a centrist, and he while he always rejected false binaries, he didn’t do so by seeking out a middle ground.
Podcast
Episode 381 “Civil War,” the Fascinating Podcast
Civil War was less about war or politics than it was about journalism. My co-host Kathy is a trained journalist, so she and I had an incredible conversation about the film and its depiction of journalism.
A Conversation
One of the best people I’ve met since moving to Dallas is author Jake Kerr. Jake is incredibly smart and relentlessly kind. He commented on my review haiku of Civil War that he though the film was incredibly cowardly, then offered to elaborate over lunch.
One comment Jake made encapsulates his critique really clearly. He observed, “No one on the far right or far left has come out against the film.” He’s right - Garland bent over backwards to make it impossible to figure out the why of the civil war. But it doesn’t work.
Garland wants to talk about the high cost of journalism (noble). It also wants to make a point about how war makes monsters out of many of us - in multiple encounters it’s impossible to tell which side of the conflict individual soldiers are fighting for. Again, this is an interesting perspective that’s well-worth interrogating.
But in a country where the leader of one of the two ‘sides’ has already incited an insurrection because he refused to acknowledge the results of a fair and free election, to try to make these points against a backdrop of an apolitical near-future American war is at best irresponsible. To Jake’s point, it’s cowardly.
(Separate plug: Jake is speaking at our next Rowlett Artists Exchange on Thursday, May 16. If you’re in the Dallas area, come to Drizl Coffee in Rowlett from 6:30-8pm. Jake has been experimenting a lot with AI, so we’re going to have a conversation about AI & the future of Art.)