In Alex Garland’s novel The Civil War, Western forces in Texas and California barely remember what they are fighting for.
At least, Garland doesn’t explicitly say what they’re fighting for. The film, which had its world premiere at SXSW on Thursday, depicts a near-future United States at the height of the Civil War as the two most populous nations have separated. Instead of explaining the politics that got the country into such chaos, “Civil War” focuses on a group of journalists documenting all the trajectories of the conflict.
“The film aims to be a conversation, so it doesn’t stress too much,” the British director said in a Q&A session after the film’s screening. “But I also think that internally everyone understands why that is. This also applies to my country and many other countries that are dealing with the effects of polarization and populism: we don’t need to explain it. We know exactly why it might happen. We know exactly what the fault lines and pressures are.” “.
As such, viewers never get an explanation as to why Texas and California united against the United States, an odd geographic pairing that sparked a lot of discussion online when A24 released a trailer for “Civil War” in February.
“I could have turned it into something that explained every shot the way a lot of movies do, and that’s fine, if they wanted to do that,” Garland continued, talking about his choice to avoid writing a specific political context. “That’s fine. But it didn’t feel right for this. It’s not in the nature of the conversation. I wanted this film to find points of agreement among everyone, I hope.”
Garland was inspired by the journalists he grew up around, as his father was a political cartoonist.
“I knew how seriously they took what they did, and one of the things that was difficult in the past — I would say arbitrarily — over 15 years (is) that journalists argue,” he said. “They don’t trust. I wanted journalists to be the heroes, because there’s a simple point at the heart of it. In any free country, journalists are not a luxury. It’s a necessity. Now, journalists have done some work to not trust themselves, but a lot of other interested parties have “She was complicit in making them untrustworthy. I think that’s unhealthy, and I think it’s wrong.”
“Civil War” stars Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson as war journalists, while Nick Offerman plays the President of the United States. Dunst, Spaeny, and Moura joined Garland on stage in Austin to discuss how they prepared for their roles.
“Once I got the role, I asked Alex to give me these cameras so I could feel as comfortable as possible,” said Dunst, who plays Lee, a journalist famous for documenting what Spaeny’s character calls the “Antifa massacre.” He wraps his belt around his wrist, and how it holds the camera.”
For Spaeny, who plays a young photojournalist who has a crush on Lee, “It’s a gift when you can bring in a character who has a hobby or a passion or a dream — getting to know Jessie through her love of photography and reading about Lee Miller.” Don McCullen and Linsey Addario and finding similarities between her and me.
“I read a lot about combat journalism, and I communicated with combat journalists,” added Moura, who plays Joel, a colleague of mine. “The most important thing was: What does this guy feel in the combat zone?”
For Garland, the most important thing was to take an anti-war stance.
“Cinema tends not to be anti-war for many reasons. The action has adrenaline. It becomes tempting,” he said. “‘Apocalypse Now’ is an incredibly beautiful film, but I’m not sure you can call it anti-war, because it’s also very tempting.” ; It pulls you into a dark love story. “We were doing everything we could to avoid that and make it not seem like a good idea, to have a civil war.”
Garland tried to achieve this with upbeat needle drops, chosen “to be disturbing and aggressive and to speak to the perverse pleasure of what was happening, but not to be seductive – to actually be a little repellent. With the execution of some soldiers coinciding with this music, I don’t feel like ‘Fuck yeah “But I feel distorted in some way.