Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
Two questions, plucked from the screenplay of Alex Garland's Civil War, as a way of talking about this movie. The first: "300 Canadian?"
Although there is something slightly absurd about this phrase, even out of context, it comes up at a tense moment. The United States is rent by some undefined Civil War, and the crew of photojournalists we are following have stopped for black-market gasoline, which will cost a lot. The first couple of offers have been rejected, with sneers, but famed war photographer Lee (Kirsten Dunst) breaks the stalemate with the "300 Canadian?" line. So we infer that U.S. money is no damn good anymore, an eerie suggestion, although the idea that Canadian currency holds an elevated and reliable value carries with it a whiff of a "Great White North"-style LOL. The line has weight, sure, and we know that things must be very gnarly indeed for the economy to have degenerated to this level, so give Garland credit for an ingenious bit of shorthand exposition—even if the impulse for inappropriate laughter is in there.
Second question: "Where in America?" The words come from a uniformed fighter in this Civil War—but what side he's on I'm not sure about, and in fact his uniform might indicate nothing more than a self-appointed "militia" member, high on xenophobia and the warm breath of his machine gun. (He's played by Jesse Plemons, ludicrously kitted out with a pair of crimson sunglasses.)
"Where in America?" is his question for the photojournalists—currently, and very nervously, trying to ease their way out of a nasty scene where Plemmons and his buddy have apparently already murdered a batch of people they found to be insufficiently American. This will end in death, if these armed America-First types deem anybody in the group to be of foreign origin, which some of them are.
It's an eerie sequence, and yes, a resonant one, given our current climate of virtual civil war. This line of dialogue sees Garland swinging for the fences, and I admire the audacity, even if I'd really like to know more about what side this crazy person represents, or if there is a side beyond sheer craziness. But I'm bugged by how we got here, a bit of plot maneuvering that brought two new (and foreign-born) characters into the story. Another irritation is how they broke up our group into two cars, through a very unlikely bit of stunt-driving. This gets to my reservations about Civil War: It's not just that the movie's war is conveniently unexplained—I think I can live with that ambiguity, at least as far as seeing what Garland will do with it—but that the film has dire issues with internal logic, character behavior, and the minute-by-minute dynamics of the movie itself.
The last point is really the issue. Some of the film's ideas are provocative, some are standard-issue dystopian, some are vague. But what's unforgivable is the flatness of so much of the staging. Early scenes have Lee and her colleague Joel (the engaging Wagner Moura, who has the expressive eyebrows of a Disney creature) taking on two tagalongs in a roadtrip: a veteran journalist (Stephen McKinley Henderson) who might not be up to the physical demands of the trip, and a photog-wannabe (Cailee Spaeny) who hero-worships Lee and appears to be in way over her head. These scenes may be expositional, but that's no reason they should be as perfunctory as they are; the spaces look unlived-in, the dialogue is pedestrian, the pacing slack. There is so little in Civil War that surprises, on the physical level, including the action-movie material that dominates the final section (the uprising comes to the White House itself) and the use of interesting songs to punch along montages of vehicles in motion. When an idea pops up that fizzes with possibilities—such as the "Twilight Zone" town that exists in utter privileged normality, without any gesture toward the violent reality of the war—Garland doesn't invest it with atmosphere or oomph; even Rod Serling on a bad day could give this interlude some brio. (And yes, someone has to say "Twilight Zone" out loud, just so we get it.)
For all its apparent "from the headlines" qualities, Civil War is actually a fairly limited portrait of objective journalism, as there is much fretting about a photojournalist's role as the bringer of truth, regardless of the cost of staying removed from the action. This, too, feels stale. There's more depth in Kirsten Dunst's grave performance than in Garland's examination of the subject; de-glammed and depressed, Lee stands in for everybody's exhaustion. I couldn't help but flash back to James Woods' manic reporter in Oliver Stone's Salvador, a movie that names names and leaves bruises, a film that brims with crazy life—by contrast, Lee's resignation doesn't give the movie much light. But then movies that have their minds perfectly made up rarely let off sparks.
April 12, 2024
