Could an American Civil War happen again?
This spring,Alex Garlandhas an answer.
I remember when I releasedEx Machina, there were a whole bunch of A.I.
‘Civil War’.A24
movies around at the same time.
And theCivil Warnarrative feels like a big anxiety right now.
Its just in the ether.
Alex Garland on the set of ‘Civil War’.A24
But references to an Antifa massacre dont explain whether the killings were committed by or upon left-wing militants.
The point of that casting, Garland says, is precisely that you cant quite pin him down.
The viewer is required to make their own interpretation, the director continues.
Kirsten Dunst in ‘Civil War’.A24
The film is actually being opaque.
It’s forcing the viewer to ask questions.
They don’t like being confused about the intentions of the people making the film.
Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Cailee Spaeny in ‘Civil War’.Murray Close/A24
They want to be reassured.
But as I see it, film is a broad church.
There’s lots of different people making lots of different sorts of films.
Cailee Spaeny and Kirsten Dunst in ‘Civil War’.A24
I want to make them like this.
I was on the edge of my seat, Dunst tells EW of first reading the script.
I wasn’t even focused on my character, which is how you usually read a script.
Cailee Spaeny in ‘Civil War’.Murray Close/A24
I was just in the film as I was reading it.
As soon as I got the role, I was like, Give me a camera!
I immediately got to work on using the same Sony lens that Lee uses.
I always had it on me and was always photographing.
Shes a very good actor, but she also has a lot of lived experience.
She hasn’t come out of nowhere.
Thats a positive when playing a journalist who’s really been around, Garland says.
But another thing I noticed with Kirsten was the way she watches, and the way she looks.
She’s highly observant, but she carries it very lightly.
She doesn’t telegraph it, she just does it.
Thats basically what photographers do.
Civil Waris sensitive to the burden of journalists trying to report the truth in times of horror.
Moura drew inspiration for his performance from real-life accounts of war correspondents.
Like many of these guys, Joel is a war junkie, Moura says.
I spoke with some of them, and they just cant get away.
Murray Close/A24
Shortly afterCivil Warbegins, Joel is offered a rare opportunity to interview the president.
We were all learning from Stephen.
He’s a well of knowledge but also has such childlike wonder, Spaeny says.
Hes teaching you these wise lessons without even making it feel like homework.
That dynamic between all of us felt really natural.
You get your eyes opened to things.
That taught me optimism is a revolutionary act, because it’s optimistic to believe in change.
There’s really hope for us all.
I see myself as part of the camera crew, thats the space I occupy on set.
And I’m often trying to find ways to get the cameras away from the actors.
The second we started the car, it was action!
It was almost like we were doing a play inside a car it was amazing.
You just eventually forgot that the cameras were there.
You didn’t have a crew member in your eyeline or someone eating Cheetos in the background.
It all felt really pure, and these nuances came out in the acting.
We all got to know each other really quickly.
In the grand tradition of American road movies, the car ride takes the characters to unexpected places.
Others are dangerous, like when they catch a glimpse of soldiers doing something that they dont want photographed.
At any given moment, things could change.
So both the viewers and our characters are constantly on the edge.
We wanted to augment that feeling with the way in which it was photographed.
But in their fourth collaboration together, Hardy and Garland still find moments of surrealism inCivil War.
(Alex and I are big fans, Hardy says of the avant-garde style.)
But, oddly enough, this setpiece came out of observation rather than invention.
That looks like surrealism, but it wasnt created by our film, Garland says.
We found it about 100 yards away from where we shot the scene.
We just dragged it slightly further up the hill.
Even during war, America remains deeply weird.
But every timeCivil Warinjects a touch of that colorful strangeness, theres also a bracing dose of realism.
As the characters get closer to their ultimate destination, they find themselves amid actual battle.
They know what this kind of thing looks like.
You know what I mean?
It just made it feel very intense, and we couldn’t have done it without them.
Whenever art intersects with politics, its easy to wonder what exactly the artist is trying to say.
But Garland prefers to provoke questions rather than provide answers.
There’s a really simple example of it inEx Machina.
That whole movie is about, Is this machine sentient or not?
Does it have consciousness?
So then it must be conscious.
Theres my answer, but it doesn’t have a big flag attached to it.
I’d sayCivil Warhas equivalents of that, but I don’t want to focus on them.
Then it’s something completely different.
And to be honest, there’s enough people doing that shouting, and they’re welcome to it.
In other words, in the midst of war, Garland prefers to keep things civil.
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