With Donald Trump and the Capitol Hill riots in court, the studiously apolitical vibe of this dystopia feels like a cop-out
s the supreme court heard arguments relating to the 6 January riot and Donald Trump sat in a criminal court in Manhattan, cinemas across America have been showing scenes from an imagined world after the end of democracy. The movie, written and directed by Alex Garland, depicts a conflict-ridden US in which rebel forces battle to overthrow the government.
Civil War does have things to say: about how war is bad, and violence corrupts, and once things get under way people exploit the chaos for all sorts of reasons – which explains the presence of Florida in the film’s imagined secessionist uprising. It’s a gripping ride that, depending on your view, is either shrewdly non-partisan in a way that assumes the audience can fill in the gaps for themselves .
The problem in this scenario is this: where are the president’s supporters and what are they doing? The movie has no thoughts. There’s no explanation of who the president is, how he got to the White House or what happened to the popular movement that elected him. Instead, the story focuses on a band of plucky photojournalists, led by a brilliant Kirsten Dunst, as they battle to get from New York to the capital to document the fall of DC.
And here, in real life, is Trump, charged with falsifying business documents with an intention to violate election laws. Held up against the events that suggested the film in the first place, Civil War has about it a vibe of the guy who doesn’t vote because “they’re all as bad as each other”.