Why is Civil War a Little Ambiguous? Is Garland’s Effort to Distinguish between Mainstream Journalism and the Media Prediction?

But now that I’ve seen “Civil War,” which is neither glib nor cynical, Garland’s decision to keep the film’s politics a little ambiguous seems like a source of its power. The emphasis here should be on “a little” because, contrary to some of what I’d read, its values aren’t inscrutable, just lightly worn. There is a reference to Portland Maoists early on. The film has a hero, a combat photographer named Lee, who was famous for shooting the antifa massacre, but we don’t find out if the victims were antiFAS or not. Still, it’s not a stretch to interpret the film as a premonition of how a seething, entropic country could collapse under the weight of Donald Trump’s return.

Nick Offerman’s “three-term” president and the troops loyal to him are under attack from the Western Forces, a coalition of militias from California and Texas. The ensuing war has left America strewn with burnt-out cars, smoldering buildings, and homeless refugees. A group of journalists, including a veteran war photographer, a young photographer, and an elderly reporter have been put together by Garland to highlight the importance of journalism. Mainstream journalism has less impact on a political world where someone’s beliefs are reinforced by their own media.

Garland’s argument that both sides are at fault, though, is disingenuous to the reality of the United States, both in 2020 when Garland wrote the script and even more so now, just months out from potentially the most consequential election in American history.

Garland is well known for creating open-ended films that allow audiences to interpret the meaning in whatever way they want. Such as the future of the universe in 2018’s Annihilation, or the idea of gender with the 2022 horror flick Men. Garland was in Ex Machina almost 10 years ago when he voiced the debate about whether artificial intelligence was a positive for society or a bad thing.