Alex Garland
Civil War

What's so civil 'bout war anyway? Axl Rose asked at the end of the iconic Guns n' Roses track, aptly titled Civil War.

Alex Garland envisions a scenario of America as a war zone, due to a new secessionist battle, akin to the one that already bloodied U.S. territories between 1861 and 1865, right around the early years of Italian unification.

In these times, when even the West has rediscovered the meaning of the word war, after having pretended for a long time to have forgotten it, and when the political climate in the United States has dangerously radicalized and polarized, especially following the well-known events at Capitol Hill. For these reasons, which are not trivial at all, Civil War is destined to be remembered as a cult in the cinema of this decade. In our so far troubled ‘20s.

Years when war is conjured with disarming lightness, sometimes as a specter, sometimes as reality. And perhaps precisely for this reason, the most suggestive and powerful aspect of the film, which ends up prevailing over everything, is the idea of war as the twilight of humanity and civilization.

A twilight, nevertheless, to be told through images, without judgment, but rather carrying forward a discourse on the very sense of them. Images of death, of violence: the photography of humanity at its worst. Or perhaps in its most habitual form, the one it has had most over the millennia.

The image, rendered in its truth by the photographic lens, is not an ethical image, just as the one who produces it is not driven by ethics or morality, by pressing the camera's click. Over and over again.

The image is naturally neutral, impartial, objective. The questions are posed implicitly, and it is the viewer who must address the problem. How many times have we been confronted with such raw brutality.

The ambiguity of photojournalists, their cynicism, their disregard for danger, to capture horror and thus convey their own sense of powerlessness. A detachment that can create discomfort but is also revealed as necessary to the purpose.

The Last Hours of America.

Garland's vision is powerful and leaves a mark. The director of Ex Machina wisely does not emphasize any cause, because that is not what it is about. He does not empathize with any side and does not fall into Manichaeism and rhetoric. He simply stages the cyclical dehumanization of fratricides, through a war road movie set during the last days of America.

Those of mass graves, snipers, outposts, and burning forests. And the tiny spaces left for humanity, fellowship, and refuge. At twilight.

An honorable mention, finally, for the perfectly fitting soundtrack, which includes, among others, Rocket USA by Suicide. And for the ineffable A24, which never misses a beat.