Great success in American cinemas for “Civil War“, the new political fantasy thriller by Alex Garland which imagines the United States grappling with a devastating civil war. In the dystopian vision of the director of “28 days later“, California and Texas are united in the fight against a federal government led by a president in his third term. The reasons why the rebellion really began are unknown and for those who know the political dynamics of the States An alliance between Austin and Sacramento is unthinkable in reality. Yet, the excellent results of this film at the box office have unleashed an avalanche of comments and analyzes in the American media on the possible collapse of a country created with the aim of guaranteeing “a more perfect union”.
“Civil War” follows the road trip of some reporters marching towards Washington to interview the president before the Western Forces – this is the name of the rebel coalition – enter the White House to lay down the commander in chief. The journalists move through scenarios and villages of an America familiar to lovers of horror films and television series, however, instead of hordes of zombies, they come across no less terrible soldiers.
“What kind of American are you?”, asks the unfortunate reporters one of these soldiers dedicated to shooting almost on sight against an enemy with elusive contours. And this is perhaps the passage in the entire film that best summarizes the anxieties of Americans who, between popcorn and diet coke, find themselves almost unconsciously immersed in a collective psychoanalysis session.
In today’s America, political tension is running high. There has been a long discussion about the assault on Congress that saw supporters of January 6, 2021 Donald Trump try to subvert the outcome of the vote. However, thanks to greater habituation to an increasingly tense climate, the news on the death threats against the judges of the trials against the billionaire or the attack on the ex’s husband had less resonance. speaker of House Nancy Pelosi. Not to mention the man who set himself on fire a few meters from the courtroom where a hearing for the Republican candidate was taking place.
This casual, low-intensity violence that pervades the USA finds correspondence, obviously on a Hollywood scale, in the ruthless actions carried out by the fighters in Garland’s film. On paper, as declared by the director himself, the insurgents are inspired by the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian warlords, but for some analysts the references to the insurrectionist groups close to Trump like the Oathkeepers and the Proud boys. American history experts also point out that the horrors committed by the rebels of “Civil War” remember those who were consumed, far from the battlefields, during the Civil War of the 1860s.
Commenting on the box office success of the dystopian thriller and mentioning Trump’s defense of the participants in the January 6 riot, the New York Times reports a poll according to which 53% of American voters believe the country is close to one new civil war. For Politic the real threat to the United States would not come from divisions between Democrats and Republicans or from the emergence of an autocratic system but from the risk of chaos taking over.
In this sense the film sows anguish even among the most optimistic spectators who, while continuing to exclude the outbreak of a national conflict, leave the cinema resigned to the fact that the state of the union does not promise anything good in any case.
