THE CIVIL WAR WE DESERVE
- Jan Writer
- Oct 13, 2024
- 3 min read
Movie review: Civil War (2024)
Welcome to America’s funeral. Civil War (2024) is not so much a dystopian thriller as it is an obituary for what was once the “land of the free” but has devolved into a chaotic dumpster fire of authoritarianism and half-baked ideologies clashing like rabid dogs. America has been circling the drain for a while now, and Alex Garland’s film simply holds the camera steady, allowing us to watch the spiral from above.
But let’s not pretend the slow death of America doesn’t have international witnesses, victims even. As Filipinos, we’ve been handcuffed to America’s imperial train wreck, dragged across the jagged rocks of its neoliberal policies, all while choking on government corruption induced by their ‘aid’ packages. There’s a sick satisfaction in watching this beast of a nation cannibalize itself.
Civil War dares to blur the lines between speculative fiction and the terrifyingly real. Garland, like a sniper hidden in the shadows, takes his shots without missing. This is a dystopia that doesn’t require much imagination. The President’s gone full dictator, the economy’s tanked, and police brutality is the national sport. Protesters beg for water while drones rain hellfire on anyone daring to question the regime.
But this movie isn’t about the grand politics of civil war. It’s about the banality of survival in the belly of the beast. It’s as much about the journalists who document this collapse as it is about the collapse itself.
The journalists in this film (Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, et al.) can’t decide whether they’re truth-tellers or complicit voyeurs. At one point, one of them takes a picture of a corpse, immortalizing a moment of violence like some twisted trophy.
And there it is. Civil War isn’t a reflection of some future conflict, but the United States rotting from within, a country too high on its own imperialistic arrogance to see that it’s the joke now. Garland doesn’t need to get into specifics like which side fired the first shot because this isn't about sides anymore. Both sides are rotten. This is America post-dollar collapse, where gas gets paid in Canadian dollars.
As an outsider—hell, as someone crushed under the weight of American hypocrisy—it’s hard not to find satisfaction in Garland’s portrayal of America’s descent into madness. The United States’ collapse is not just an American problem. Its tentacles are everywhere. From our labor markets to our very own politics, America’s implosion will have global consequences. And maybe, the rest of us will get some breathing room.
But while Garland gets the decay right, the film itself feels like it’s having an existential crisis. Are we supposed to pity these American journalists for losing their country, or should we applaud as they witness their empire’s collapse, a necessary reckoning?
Either way, it’s poetic, I suppose, but like every American tragedy, the world’s expected to weep along. Sorry, but I’ve had enough of weeping for America.
Civil War doesn’t really tell us anything new. But it’s not about novelty. It’s about watching an empire collapse in real-time, filmed beautifully with all the pretension of an A24 project.
But we’ve seen this movie before, haven’t we? Because America’s been screening it for years—both on your TV and in the streets of countries like ours and countries considered “Third World,” where its imperial policies leave us struggling to breathe.
If Garland’s film is any indication, the real horror isn’t that the United States could fall into civil war. It’s that the world has been waiting for it.
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