Alex Garland says the Civil War has nothing to say about America

[ad_1]

From the first trailerIt looked like director Alex Garland’s film. Civil war would be a scathing indictment of something, whether it was the American Empire in general or more specific concerns like the growing threat of fascism or people who have the privilege of “staying out of politics” even outside the borders of the United States, but it all seemed a little murky . The weirdness of the world Garland had created for the film didn’t help, with California and Texas allied against (and successfully invading) almost the entire Midwest and East Coast in a new civil war, although that doesn’t help. It made sense, but all Garland had really said, until recently, was that the logistics of war aren’t really the point and that the film was more about the importance of journalism (Civil war focuses on Kirsten Dunst as a reporter documenting the horrors of war).

That made a lot of sense, but during a recent South By Southwest panel (through The Hollywood Reporter), Garland felt the need to clarify the film’s politics by saying that it basically has none, at least not in terms of specific real-world details. To begin, Garland explained that Civil war it’s not In fact about America, because America’s problems can happen and have happened around the world, even with what he calls the assumption that America is “immune to some kinds of problems.”

He says he could go to Britain, where he’s from, and see “the same thing happen,” and he doesn’t even see easy access to guns in the United States as part of the theme of his film. “Any country can disintegrate into a civil war, whether there are weapons floating around or not,” he suggested, adding that “civil wars have been carried out with machetes and still managed to kill a million people.”

You’re probably not wrong about that, but, again, all promotional images used before Civil war was, at least in part, about America and/or guns, from Jesse Plemons’ character holding an assault rifle while questioning the other characters. what type of Americans must The poster with snipers inexplicably placed on top of the Statue of Liberty.. Apparently, none of that is intended to say anything about America.

So if it’s not about America or guns, what is the movie about? Garland explained that it is about political division in general and our insistence on “speaking and not listening.” She said there are politicians and people in the media “on both sides of the divide” who are “wonderful” and that “the left and the right are ideological arguments about how to govern a state” and nothing more. She says what we should do is try one, reject it if it doesn’t work, and then try the other. “But we’ve turned it into ‘good and bad,'” she said, making politics a “moral issue,” calling it “fucking idiotic and incredibly dangerous.”

the idea in Civil war is that Garland took away “the polarization,” as he said at SXSW, which is why typically blue California has “put aside its political differences” and partnered with typically red Texas. Garland stated that the justification for this is explained in the film and is “very clear”, suggesting that the existence of a “fascist president who trashed the Constitution” is part of it, but that the audience must “step forward and not “Expect these things to be spoon-fed to you.”

It all seems a little silly and out of touch with reality, like that kind of altruistic idealism that can’t comprehend the existence of people who want act in bad faith and want See other people suffer. But the fact that Civil war It doesn’t seem to have any connection to real politics, beyond the existence of divisions, apparently it’s The Point. Furthermore, having something to say would only create more divisions, and that is the real threat that the world faces right now.

Leave a Comment