My thoughts:
There is a sizable contingent of political extremists in this country who see the looming threat of civil war as nothing more than a fun way to spend a summer. These people are mostly well-off upper-middle-class dweebs who have never experienced scarcity in any real way. They romanticize the idea of guerrilla warfare because they are too far removed from any armed conflict to understand the reality of how a war would materially affect their comfortable, affluent lives. They are the types of people who buy Che Guevara shirts on Amazon or "protect their communities" by open-carrying at Starbucks. They are pampered, ignorant, and deeply insecure.
Civil War (2024) is a polemic directed at these people. The goal of the film is to illustrate to them what the chaos of civil war actually looks like, and to shock them out of their suburban complacency. It is not fun. It is not a vacation. It is not a game. Everyone talks big behind a keyboard, but when their power goes out, the gas stations close down, or (god forbid) there's a toilet paper shortage, it stops being funny real quick.
My main problem with the film is that I don't think it goes far enough in conveying this point. It is a sad truth that movies inadvertently glorify anything happening onscreen, so in order to make a truly effective "antiwar" film, urban combat, starvation, and mass graves must be shown in the most explicit terms possible. Sadly, most "antiwar" movies shy away from this. And while Civil War stages several effective set pieces to showcase the brutality of wartime carnage, I could not help but feel that some audience members would nonetheless walk out of the theater saying "I'm glad California won! We wrecked the East Coast!" (Hell, even I indulged in this feeling for a few moments.)
Even so, the movie makes its case effectively in other ways. The causes of the war, the sides, and the reason for the conflict breaking out are all impenetrable and unclear. Some critics have argued that this was done simply to avoid obvious real-life parallels, but it also contributes to the environment of confusion and chaos on the ground. There is not much real-world basis for the politics behind this movie, and that works in its favor, as audiences must leave their preconceived notions at the door and just experience the narrow, confined story the movie tells. By following war reporters through the conflict, Civil War further avoids partisanship or favoritism-- the focus is always on the characters, their experiences, and the material conditions they suffer through. Whatever ideological divide caused this conflict, it takes the backseat to questions like "Where can we sleep that's safe tonight?" and "Will we be shot if we pull up to that gas station?" This is what war actually looks like for people, and it was the right approach for this material.
I'm not sure if Civil War succeeds in being the visceral wake-up call Garland intended it to be. Its reputation may ultimately rest on how it's perceived by audiences, and I sincerely hope they get the message (despite the fact that the film occasionally pulls its punches). As it is, it's compelling and tense, and the acting is consistently strong. But while I won't criticize it for making artistic choices I personally would've done differently, its reach certainly exceeds its grasp at times.
I pretty much completely agree with you except I maybe am a little less critical. This was WAY better than I thought it was going to be and about as good as any film on this subject I could ever imagine being. That’s not to say it is perfect, but the fact that the film I kept thinking about over and over again while watching it was
Apocalypse Now — maybe the greatest film of all-time — is a huge point in its favor. (To be clear, that’s at least in part because our main characters keep descending into more and more surreal war-based horror they observe as the plot progresses while they are in search of the man supposedly at the heart of it all.) As is the fact that I came closer to literal tears in the forest fire sequence than I have at any movie in any theater in my entire life. I honestly left the theater not entirely sure how to process what I saw. My only concrete thought was “We absolutely cannot let this ever happen.” But the fact that others I saw it with immediately devolved into a debate about whether the president was Trump or not and who which side was supposed to be filled me with despair and made me more hopeless than ever. I might as well be of a different species from anyone who could watch THAT and come out of it still arguing over the very nonsense it’s telling us all to stop and actually think about the consequences of before it’s too late. So maybe it didn’t go far enough.
But idk how it could have gone much farther without being NC-17 and restricted to an even smaller audience. If it reaches anyone anywhere and maybe snaps them into sanity, it’ll have done it’s job as far as I’m concerned. And as a pure work of art, I honestly believe it just might be a masterpiece. There is not a single day since it’s come out I have not thought about this film. It’s even haunted my dreams. Compare to that Bob Marley movie which I saw around the same time. All I remember is laughing hysterically at “Yah man, we write about the Exodus movie man, and this may solve your album cover problem no man?” Every other frame of the movie is forgotten, but parts of Civil War will likely stick with me for the rest of my life. Also the sound design in the climactic sequence was the best in any film since Heat. Hell, throughout the entire movie. Every single gunshot felt real and some made me almost jump out of my seat. One of the rawest, most visceral experiences I’ve ever had in a theater and made me question more than ever whether any political goal could ever possibly be worth this. All in all, more horrifying than any horror film ever and I think I kinda loved it, yet it’s weird to admit it considering the bad taste it left in my mouth. “So wrong yet so right” is ultimately how I may describe it.
