Friday 19 April 2024 – Focus
And so cinema too has its “The Prophet’s Song”, the novel by Paul Lynch, winner of the 2023 Book Prize (in Italy published at the end of March by 66th&2nd) which imagines, in a not so alternative present, Ireland previously governed by a fascist party and then devastated by a civil war. The film in question is called Civil WarIt has directed by the English director and novelist Alex Garland (his Ex machina, Annihilation And Men) and is among the most anticipated releases of this spring, after that at home in a single weekend it grossed more than 25 million dollars and generated a clear polarization of opinions.
In a country that is heading towards the presidential election with an electoral base that has never been so divided, with a candidate (Trump) who promises fire and sword in case of defeat and has already once approved the assault of his supporters on Congress and a president in office (Biden) distracted by two foreign war fronts (Ukraine and Palestine), Civil War takes advantage of the moment and slyly hits the mark: right or wrong, good or bad, it is a film that provocatively exposes the nerves of a nation. As Anna Lombardi wrote in “La Repubblica”, “43% of American citizens already think that a civil war is actually possible within the next decade and 23% agree that violence could be necessary to save the country”.
In the film the conflict has no clear motivation and the divisions on the field are so confusing and unrealistic that the production company A24 felt the duty (and the promotional need) to upload a map of the country at war online. Just to understand the absurdity of the context, the very liberal California and the republican Texas are allies, the loyalist states hold together politically and geographically antithetical areas such as New England and the central part of the Midwest, while the capital Washington is besieged to the north by the Western Forces and to the south by the Florida Alliance… Evidently Garlandalso screenwriter, he enjoyed shuffling the cards of past and present historyso much so that in an interview which appeared in the “New York Times” he felt the duty to point out that his civil war is «the simple extension of the current situation in the United States: a polarized situation».
However, as Andrew Marantz pointed out in the “New Yorker”, «Civil War he seems absolutely uninterested in seeking the causes of a modern American civil war, and consequently in suggesting ways to prevent it.” And opposing a hypothetical conflict without addressing the conditions that could trigger it, the critic continued, «is a bit like claiming to be against mass incarceration by deliberately avoiding talking about crime, police, poverty, psychology, judges and laws ».
In short, the most common accusation against Civil War it is that of superficialityif not downright ambiguity. Garland described his film as “empathetically anti-war”but many commentators have written that the great American anti-war films of the past (Apocalypse Now, Doctor Strangelove) were also indictments against the United States government, while here we remain rather vague about guilt and responsibility, reducing the civil war to a fratricidal and indistinct struggle for survival.
A clue to Garland’s position may come from the fact that the protagonist Lee Smith, played by Kirsten Dunst And inspired by the real Lee Miller, is a war photographer, an impartial witness to horrors and tragedies. Yet the very equidistance of the character from the conflict, during the infernal journey that takes her and three other colleagues from New York to Washington to interview the President barricaded in the White House, would show the contradictions of the film, because, as Clarisse Loughrey wrote in ‘“Independent”, «not all conflicts arise and grow in the same way; people don’t kill and die for no reason; and Lee’s impartiality rings hollow when the United States itself has personally participated in so many international conflicts.”
On the other hand, it must be said that supporters of the film glorify the very nebulous uncertainty of Civil Warexistential pessimism and crude realism which would make it a universal work and would call into question the moral position of every spectator and every political force. «Rarely», wrote Manhola Dargis in the “New York Times”, «have I seen a film capable of making me so uncomfortable and a face like that of Kirsten Dunst, capable of expressing the malaise of a nation in such a vivid way that it seems an x-ray.”
Meanwhile, amid online comments from enthusiastic viewers and other critics, A24 sold Civil War to dozens of countries before even knowing the box office results of the first weekend, thus immediately returning to the 50 million spent to produce it, the highest amount ever spent by the coolest company in new American cinema.
READ THE REVIEW
Tags: Civil War work divided America weekend earned million dollars
