'Civil War': Alex Garland makes a real anti-war movie, starring Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny

While many films seem to strive to be anti-war movies, many fall into a category of Apocalypse Now, that almost romanticize war. For Alex Garland, an element of making Civil War (now in theatres), starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson, was figuring out what makes war cinema lean in that direction, so Civil War can avoid it.

"I think some of it is quite obvious, it would be people's behaviour, their behaviour is overconfident or unconcerned, or not really feeling like they are in actual contact with violence," Garland told Yahoo Canada. "There's other things, which are just to do with cinema's superpowers, which is the faces of actors, the way a frame makes them look, and often, in particular, what music does, the way music will lead you. ... The editing often is there to make something smoother or more liquid, and you take out awkwardness, you take out jaggedness."

"So in the end, it turns out to be a little bit of everything, and what we did was, we talked a lot about not just what to avoid, but also what constitutes something that feels real, whether it's in news footage, or a documentary, but also in lived experience. In a way, it sounds silly, but what reality feels like, and drawing on personal experience, in one way or another, to make something feel truthful."

What is 'Civil War' about?

Set in near-future American, Dunst plays a seasoned war photojournalist, Lee, who is covering the civil war in the U.S., working alongside Joel (Moura). They are set to travel from New York City to Washington, D.C., to get the last interview with the country's fascist president, played by Nick Offerman.

Making the journey with Joel and Lee is Sammy (Henderson), an older colleague who works for The New York Times, who wants to go to the frontlines in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a young, aspiring photojournalist, Jessie (Spaeny), who idolizes Lee.

A particularly interesting aspect of Garland's film is being able to experience the story through three different generations of journalists. Lee is initially quite protective of Jessie, while Sammy can clearly see Lee's ambition in Jessie.

For Garland, there was also a sense of repetition that can be seen through these characters, the impact of repetition and how it changes journalists in different stages of their career.

"Having lived through something again and again, and the different phases of that, encountering it for the first time, or the last time, and then the mid state," Garland said. "The journalists that the film is throwing to are kind of old fashioned in a way, it's not that they don't exist anymore, they absolutely do still exist, but they're not the dominant voice in journalism, in the way they used to be."

"The old guy works for The New York Times, it represents something. The youngest journalist there is using a 35-millimetre stills camera, which is the photojournalist tool that in a way would belong to the '60s and the '70s, and even the fact that it's not an autofocus camera, it's a manual focus camera. ... A press photographer in 1992 would have probably been using an autofocus Nikon, or something like that. ... It's throwing back to a period of time where journalists were functioning primarily as reporters, and then the film itself is trying to behave like a reporter, in a way."

'The more polarized and divided everything has got, the more I've realized I'm a centrist'

Garland began writing Civil War in 2020 and from then to 2024, the world has become, realistically, even more polarized and more divisive. The filmmaker identified that over the course of four years, there has been a shift in his perspective on this film, within the changing political landscape in several countries around the world.

"I think in some ways, writing is an act of processing, and ... four years ago things were, in a way, exactly the same, but maybe just less so," Garland said. "But in other ways eerily the same."

"I think that six, seven, eight years ago, more, 20 years ago, if you'd have said, 'What are your politics?' I'd have said I'm left wing and I'd have just kind of left it at that, in some respects. ... My principles were left wing and it involved a range of beliefs, which might be to do with taxation and welfare, and regulated markets, and that sort of thing. Over the last four years and in making the film, what I've realized is that what I really am is a centrist. I've become more of a centrist. The more polarized and divided everything has got, the more I've realized I'm a centrist."

Additionally, Garland shared that in previous years, maybe around six years ago, he would have said the function of government and the media is "to make a better country for people" and "to look after people." But now he believe's that's their "secondary function."

"It's an incredibly important function, but I've started to think that actually the main function of the government and media is to protect us from fascism, to protect us from extremism, and I think that's why I would now call myself a centrist," Garland said. "Because I believe, and this might sound hysterical, but it is, in effect, partly what the film is about, I think I can see fascist behaviour, quite clearly, being exhibited around the world. In my country. In America."

But of course, many fascists today don't actually identify themselves as fascists, with Garland identifying that they see it as a "dirty word."

"I see people in politics and in industry, and also in the media, who are making fascistic statements and having fascistic thought patterns, and because of the way we amplify these thought patterns, they get a kind of dominance that not only do they not deserve to have, but it's unwise for them to have," Garland said. "It's actually actively dangerous for them to have."

"I think that probably sounds alarmist to a lot of people, but I would say it's actually quite reasonable. You can actually demonstrate changes within society, but also in the way other countries behave, feeling that say America or Europe is in a weaker, more uncertain state, that their own fascist tendencies are allowed off the hook. So I don't actually think it's alarmist. I think it's quite tangible."