“Civil War” brings war and its horrors to our doorstep, and it’s chillingly realistic

CINEMA – But what would America look like if it were in the grip of a fratricidal civil war? It is this brutal image that Alex Garland brings us in Civil War. The feature film with Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen Henderson and Wagner Moura pulls no punches to show that war is dirty, merciless and that it burns everything in its path: landscapes, buildings, and people. people.

In Civil War, the viewer travels with four journalists across the United States ravaged by a civil war that the secessionists are about to win. Their objective in leaving New York: to reach Washington DC and be the first to see the President removed. They take different steps, sometimes in spite of themselves, which gives rise to sequences each aiming to illustrate a specific aspect of the war in its own way.

The filmmaker shows the rare “bubbles of joy” that allow the protagonists (and spectators) to breathe briefly. A conversation by the fire, a shared laugh, a breathtaking landscape. But the director of Ex Machina throws us in the face that these parentheses are precisely that, anomalies in the war. The reality is different.

The fighting between several armed factions, which only stops when one of the groups has stopped breathing. Displaced populations and refugee camps where peace is struggling to find its way. Individuals who take advantage of war to commit atrocities in the name of their ideals and prejudices. Those who do not choose sides and turn a blind eye with everything we see on the news “.

The power of images

To accentuate the realism of a conflict at its rawest, the director uses an essential “weapon” in times of war: the camera. Lee and Jessie are both photojournalists. Jessie is a beginner, she has yet to see the horrors of war. Lee, Joe and Sammy on the other hand, are ” regulars ”, not to say traumatized.

But the more the kilometers pass, the more Jessie and her camera capture moments of war, and the more omnipresent it becomes. The old slogan of Paris Match “The weight of words, the shock of photos” would be quite appropriate here.

It’s difficult not to follow certain sequences in apnea as the suspense is so dense. A suspense that only rare sounds break: the gunshots, the music which is like in Alex Garland’s previous films (Annihilation, 28 days later) both quirky and essential, and the camera shutter.

The unvarnished war

Civil War also highlights the importance of the profession of war reporter and the transmission of images, however violent they may be. But this is not a film about the profession. He could otherwise have set his plot in any country that is actually at war. The choice of dystopia is precisely intended to alert consciences.

By placing the war (and all its horrors) at the heart of America, that is to say of a Western country in which in 2024 it seems unthinkable that a war would break out, Alex Garland is ringing the bell. alarm.

This terrifying life that he depicts is that of millions of people who live in countries at war today. A reality to which, despite the existence of photos, documentaries and reports, it is easy to turn a blind eye. Because Gaza, Ukraine, Armenia, Haiti… it’s still too far away for many Westerners.

We are ultimately all a bit like the parents of the two heroines, “ to act as if nothing had happened » while a war is taking place right next door. So that we stop looking away, Civil War brings war into our backyard.

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