“Oh, so you’re a cinephile? Well, what kind of cinephile are you? What, you don’t know?”
First Screening. Regal Cinemas. More controversial than the film is perhaps the controversy about the controversy. There seems to be several splits that are genuinely surprising, starting from the trailer to the aftereffects of the screening. At several points people are asking themselves ‘what the fuck is that about?’ And when you analyze the arguments, you can see how Garland has specifically constructed something for a purpose, and either you understand that purpose, or you don’t. And upon that understanding, you can either get pissed off about it, or you don’t. There is the outlier of ‘I understand what is going on, I just don’t like it’ which is perfectly reasonable as I just used that argument on my Poor Things review. I get it. I liked Civil War, but I understand people’s contention, even if I think some of them are being shallow.
We should, perhaps, start with the trailer, which had everyone in America asking themselves in what universe would California be teaming up with Texas ON ANYTHING much less a war against an oppressive federal government. A more discerning, informed citizen, preferably from Texas, could look at the point spread the last Governor’s election in which Beto O’Rourke came within ten points of ousting Greg Abbott, or the same “liberal” coming within five points or replacing Ted Cruz, and you could say... well, ti’s not that farfetched to think that Texas could be a Blue State. In fact, Colin Allred, who is running as the Democrat to replace Ted Cruz this November, has just tripled Beto’s fundraising, and has doubled Cruz’s last effort. I think it is also worth mentioning that Allred is again just five points away from Cruz. Five points does not sound like a lot, unless you consider that it is TEXAS, where Republicans like Rick Perry have been clearing ten to fifteen points, and in many cases running against four other people and still dealing a double-digit blow. Texas is more in danger of turning Blue than California is turning Red. That being the reality, we must retreat to the world of the film, which operates on a different basis.
The trailer, and thus the film, is operating on two different levels. The first is the overt, apolitical level, and the second is the subtextual level, and Garland is brilliant to do this. Staying on topic for now, the apolitical context makes it possible for any state to band with any other state for the purposes of the Civil War. In the context of the film, the President of the United States has sought and won a third term in office. This being the first of three stated crimes in the film, we will ignore the others for now, which is subtextual, and concentrate on the apolitical first crime: the third term. You do not need, necessarily, a political party stance to believe that a third term is unnecessary or illegal. Only one President has had a third (and a fourth term) when Roosevelt ran in 1940 (and 1944). It was controversial then, and it is verboten now. After his death, Congress saw fit to term limit the Presidency, and this has been the law of the land ever since.
The Third Term leads the apolitical level to delve into the subtextual level: which is why is the President seeking a Third Term anyway? This is never explained in the film, as with many, many helpful answers would undermine the apolitical level. This being the case, you can extrapolate the subtextual from the apolitical and answer your own questions about what is going on. To seek a Third Term is a violation of the law. But to seek it why? To seek it to do what? And that leads us to the conclusion the President is a bad actor who is using the Third Term to do very sinister things. This leads us to the subtextual comments by the journalist Sammy who in the film poses questions he would ask the President, including “Why did you disband the FBI?” and “Do you regret ordering airstrikes on American citizens?”
The second one, regarding the air strikes, I hope, would start an immediate Civil War against any President who so ordered such wholesale massacre of his or her fellow citizens. This should not be controversial. This should not even be an argument. In this view, I can see Gavin Newsom and Greg Abbot saying, “wait just a fucking minute,” and pooling resources to a common cause of freedom. If you cannot see that, then you go from the apolitical to the subtextual, and you must ask yourself... why would one or the other NOT consider it a common cause to oppose such a President? To extrapolate this, you can insert personalities. If Joe Biden ordered air strikes on American civilians, do you see Gavin Newsom defending him, or joining an effort to oust him? Personally, I cannot see Joe Biden doing this, but I can see Newsom abandoning Biden if he did so. It is not a stretch to say that Abbot would be all over a military junta to oust Biden, so I suppose the remaining question in this scenario is would Newsom help him? If the shoe were on the other foot, one could ask... if President Trump were to order air strikes on American civilians, I could see Newsom losing his shit and leading a coalition (unlike other more tame California governors) but would we expect Abbot to do the same? I trust in Abbot is less... so I am not sure he would ever turn on Trump. Most politicians, even those who despise him, will never turn on him. This man insulted Ted Cruz’s wife and Cruz can’t wait to suck his dick, so... no, I guess my faith in the GOP to partner with a ‘liberal’ state to oust Trump is a zero. So, for the record, the theory works one way, and not the other.
But the theory being what it is, works. As Don Coreleone once said, ‘the enemy’s enemy is my friend,’ and to quote the on-screen journalist Sammy in this film ‘once this is over, the Secessionists will turn on each other. Just you watch.’ So, this scenario, however improbable at first glance, actually does work depending on the problem and depending on the personalities in contact and conflict. This being the case, I’m sure most people can get past the initial ‘what?’ factor the trailer imposes.
This leads us into an examination of the film on this apolitical level. Having removed modern day politics from the film, we are free to imagine a plot based on face value. The President has defied the 22nd Amendment and is in office for a Third Term. The film opens with a protest in New York City in which people protesting the President’s Third Term are being met with New York City riot control. This scene ends when a teenage girl wearing a backpack with a bomb in it, runs into the crowd of protestors to kill as many of them, and herself, as she can. Judging by the map provided for us in the hotel room later, We see that New York City is in the United States, or what is dubbed the “Loyalist States” which include New England, the Carolinas, the MidWest, and several western states including Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. If the protestors are protesting ‘the government’ then the suicide bomber is obviously for ‘the government’ because her purpose is to kill as many protestors as she can and that makes an already mixed-up situation a little more confusing. Normally, suicide bombers are used by desperate individuals to force a government to make a decision it does not want to make. Here, the bomber is trying to simply kill the protestors. In this case, the bomber is actually on the side of the police, who undoubtably died with the bomber. This is my first criticism of Civil War. This scene would make more sense if it took place in a city in California and the bomber killed dozens of cops fighting protestors instead of just everyone. That way the targeting is clear and unambiguous.
The plot of the film, in which a group of journalists cross the country in a warped road trip in order to interview the President of the Loyalist States before he is overthrown, presents itself in increasingly bizarre situations that escalate in tension. The first ‘stop’ reveals to us what neighbors will do to neighbors when the journalists come across a gas station manned by (let’s just say it) rural hicks who have strung up people they went to high school with in a car wash to torture them. No empathy or sympathy is wasted. Off screen, they are executed. What were their crimes? Garland, nor the audience, should care. I happened. Thus, it can happen. In Northern Ireland in 1980, neighbors shot neighbors not based on the color of their skin, but where they went to church. This is not outlandish, or dare I say, political. It is meant to be this way.
At the second stop, the journalists get hit by a sniper, forcing them to take cover next to two snipers who are looking for the interloper. “Who are you shooting at?” Kirsten Dunst asks. “We don’t know. Someone is trying to kill us and we are trying to kill them before that.” “Do you know what side they’re on?” This only irritates the soldiers. Again, no politics is in play. No stated purpose other than the one to survive exists.
The following stop is a full-fledged fire fight between a uniformed, camouflaged military outfit and a bunch of guys in Hawaiian shirts wearing military kit over their weekend attire. We can expect they are not with the Loyalist states. This, coupled with the two previous stops, indicates to us the Loyalists are losing... and losing fast. The next stop is a small town which has decided not to take sides, and instead is choosing to remain like Switzerland, a town in search of stability while surrounded by utter chaos. Lee tells Sammy “I’ve forgotten America is like this.” “Funny,” Sammy replies, “I was going to say it’s exactly as I remember.” This is the height of the apolitical.
Even the ending of the film, in which the organized military forces of Texas, California, and their Allies field an army across the Potomoc to suppress the Capitol and occupy it, is as neutral as can be. We are told the Pentagon signed a cease fire and only small pockets of resistance remain. This also includes the Capitol Police, the Secret Service, and small outfits of the Loyalist military. These forces are pushed back to the White House grounds where the President is dragged from behind the Resolute Desk and executed.
The Subtextual Reading of the film, in which one must deduct from the events in order to piece together what is going on, is meant to protect the film from being called out right liberal propaganda. In this way, the film succeeds. Though there are right-wing protests online about the film, they are rather muted – usually on two levels. One in which Conservative Republicans say on Fox News how preposterous it all is and isn’t that typical liberal Hollywood – dividing America blah blah blah. The other argument is rather more nuanced. It is in which quietly, noddingly, the Fascists of the country say ‘oh, look at how they paint us, how unfair’ in which they are forgetting of course the follow up questions... which side are you being painted as? And this is where the film reaches a whole new level of disturbing.
The key scene in the film, in which two of the journalists are kidnapped somewhere in the Virginias, has by now become famous due to Jessie Plemon’s character, clad in neon orange shooting range glasses, challenges the journalists to identify themselves. As each journalist identifies themself, Plemons chooses to shoot the two Asian journalists. The test, in which Plemons famously asks “What kind of an American are you?” Is now the source of memes and jokes, which I find morbid and dark (although I love the one that reads “what kind of a Star Wars fan are you?”). This horrible scene, in which no one is meant to survive, is backdropped by an enormous dump truck filled with dead bodies being emptied into a recently excavated ditch. Upon inspection, most of the bodies are people of color, and all of the bodies are dressed in civilian attire. Quickly, one surmises Plemons and his gang have been hunting and executing anyone who isn’t white and anyone who is white and helping anyone who is not white. This is ethnic cleansing, circa Kosovo in 1999, Serbia in 1993, Rwanda 1997, and one could argue certain villages in Palestine in 1948 and in Israel just last year. Having stumbled across such a horrific war crime, there is no way any of these pencil pushers are going to make it away from this ditch alive and we know it.
Here the subtextual reading kicks into overdrive. If Plemons and his gang are killing non-white people in an organized way and disposing of their bodies as to hide the crime, one must ask what their ultimate goal is? Do they intend to stop at their town? Their county? Their state? Thier nation? Transferred to modern day politics, who is the most xenophobic of the two parties? Although there is an antisemitic streak in the Arab section of the DNC, we cannot ignore that the entire “America First” campaign is rooted in hate and xenophobia and used to scare people in to voting a certain way. This is why there are so many people upset at Plemons uttering this line in the trailer (I doubt many of these people actually went to see the film). It is because it exposes their true nature: the wont of genocide.
About four years ago I was at work, I was talking to a colleague of mine in the parking lot when a subcontractor drove up in his huge Trump truck and we had a conversation about whatever. A second subcontractor duly showed up soon after and he also joined us for conversation. As the four of us stood there, my colleague stepped forward and identified a huge dent in the bumper of the second contractor’s truck and inquired how the dent was formed. “Oh,” he replied casually, “I ran over a Democrat this morning. Double points.” Now, I am not a Democrat, and I have never voted straight ticket at any election, but my colleague knew that I was not happy with the present political situation and laughed nervously while slapping my back as if to say ‘oh, wasn’t that funny, please play along.’ But of course, I wasn’t going to play along, and watched the two contractors change their faces as they realized they said something out of line with someone – as if I were the very thing they wished to kill on their way to work that morning. I put them at ease when I replied. “Hey, it’s alright guys. Just throw my body in ditch with the Jews and the Fags. No one will ever know.”
I don’t remember how that particular situation ended, but I know now that whenever I see those two, they are very careful how they speak to me. I guess it would be untoward to mention that I am a huge Second Amendment advocate and will not be submitting to my political murder without an enormous lead-filled resistance.
My point in mentioning this story in conjunction with the ethnic cleansing scene, is to bring up a string of very logical conclusions. Why are right wingers so upset at the film portraying them this way, considering none of them (that I have read or seen, which is admittedly a limited argument) are citing mass murder as being objectionable? The reason they hate the film, and hate Plemons’ portrayal, is because it hits the nail on the head. They are called out as Fascists. As racists. As white supremacists. These are not people who want a stronger border, better immigration laws, deportations. They are past this point. They are ready to start killing 1) everyone not white and 2) everyone white who is helping everyone not white. The rage the right feels about this scene is intense because it unveils their true feelings about what they hope to achieve in a second Trump term: extermination of the ideological left starting with color. They are unmasked in this way, and it makes them angry. When in fact what they want to do, what they wish for, what they lie awake at night and masturbate to, is to live like Robert Keith Packer. If only they could be so bold, so like him. So like Plemon’s very character in Civil War... if they could do that, they could be complete. They could be men, much like the Hamas murderers of October 7th who raised their bloody hands-on Instagram reels and shouted to their relatives in the West Bank “look at me! I’m a man now because I have murdered a Jew!”
From this controversial scene we can then backwards extrapolate the evil intentions of the President. Why did he disband the FBI? So he could avoid being held accountable for his crimes. This is much like Trump firing his FBI Director and his Attorney General. Trump even threatened to fire the top seven lawyers in the Justice Department if they did not take his side in contesting the 2020 election but only backed off when they told him he would be facing mass resignations in the field offices and near total collapse of the legal system if he did so (See Richard Donoghue and Steven Engel on Wikipedia’s sources). Nick Offerman’s absent President, then, does not seem to be that far from what we have had in the past. And this parallel is what pisses conservatives off about the movie. They’re pissed because it is exposed as true. The proof that the whole shebang, The Big Lie, the Capitol Putsch, the ‘Fake News’ wolf cries, that all of the argument of the right is a bunch of shit is exposed here. For if they were right, then they wouldn’t be trying to hide it. They would be trying to promote it. But because they are all going to jail for it, or being prosecuted for it, they are running, fleeing, like scared little liars. They’re not pleading guilty and screaming “TRUMP WON!” They’re apologizing and serving, in some cases, thirty years. They are wrong. And they know they are wrong. That is why the Fascists in the GOP are upset at this film. They can’t wear their “Camp Auschwitz” sweater in public, and they hate the woke libs for it.
While I do see a malcontent left criticize the film for being an apolitical mishmash with absolutely no background, I do not see the same hate filled cup runneth over. This is a remarkable difference littered with nuance and debate. I listened to the Big Picture Podcast, in which Amanda Dobbins, Sean Fennessy, and Chris Ryan from the Ringer debated the pros and cons of the movie. They gave it an overall positive review because it took an apolitical stance. In the past, I have gleaned all of them as East Coast liberals, so i expected them to discuss the subtextual, which they did ever so lightly as if to dance around a topic that may offend at least a third of their audience. Again, a positive experience. However, I also listened to Mike White of the Projection Booth roundly TROUNCE this film for an hour in a well thought out, well-argued discussion with Chris Stachiw and Father Malone and I can’t say I disagreed with that. They are, in what I would describe, as way more left that the Big Picture, so here we an unusual situation: three liberals that hate it, and three liberals that love it. This calls back to a hysterical post that Kevin Smith did on his old View Askew page about two people in a carnival slingshot. Once hated it, one loved it – same experience. This is admittedly what I love about cinema. I once praised Kyle MacLachlan’s de-aging on the Fallout series on Hulu as extraordinary. Five minutes later someone replied calling me an idiot for thinking that kinder garden level CGI was anything but horrible. Ah. America.
Mike also hated Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s black comedy about the right-wing regime of America denying science in the face of disaster. The right has a long history of this whether it’s climate change or vaccines, or even the information technology behind how voting machines actually work. In his hysterical, one line criticism on Letterbxd, Mike simply wrote “Don’t be obvious.” And this, in effect, was what was wrong with that film in his view. If it were more... well... neutral and universal, it would be more timeless and meaningful. Look at the entire career of Costa-Gavras as an example. Z could be any mediterranean country. State of Siege could be any Latin American country. Both films could take place at any time. For some, what is funny about Don’t Look Back’s obviousness is what is wrong with Civil War, and vice versa. Some are consistent. Some are not. Cinema all one big carnival slingshot with two seats.
In closing, I liked the film because these two layers spoke to me. Though I do not think it is a spectacular masterpiece, it presents an intellectual discourse that I have not been able to stop thinking about since I saw it. Thus, Garland has created yet another interesting commentary on modern day. This in itself has value. Whether you love it or hate it might depend on what you find objectionable in the film. The Civil War itself? Or why such a Civil War would be necessary to begin with. The objection over the mass execution scene is befuddling to me because to deny that scene legitimacy is to deny that there are people like that in America. And there are definitely people who are like that in America. And if you don’t believe that, then you must be wearing some kind of vision filter on your side of the slingshot. Like perhaps neon orange glasses.