Civil War starring Kirsten Dunst imagines an America tearing itself apart

An early contender for 2024's most controversial film, Civil War was labelled "irresponsible" and potentially "dangerous", just from February's provocative trailer.

As you might have guessed from the title, Civil War depicts contemporary America dividing into fighting factions.

Even for social media, reaction was heightened: Commenters deemed it the exact opposite of what the country needed during a tense election year, and a potential psy-op from Hollywood to manifest and incite real-world violence that would spiral into the end of America as we know it ("All Empires Fall" is the film's tagline).

Speaking to the reaction, star Kirsten Dunst hopes audiences will be surprised by the film.

"You don't know what you're in for," she tells ABC Entertainment. "It's really unexpected – there's never been a movie like this.

"What's great about this film is that we don't have a message for you," she adds. "It really lets the audience imprint their own beliefs. For me, it really shakes you, in a very powerful way."

Written and directed by provocateur Alex Garland, Civil War runs with current anxieties and turns them into visceral, fun-house horrors, much like previous films Men, Annihilation and Ex Machina (misogyny, climate change, artificial intelligence, respectively).

It follows a set of journalists driving from New York to Washington DC in hopes of interviewing the authoritarian president (Nick Offerman), who is likely to be killed any day by the Western Front, a secessionist alliance between California and Texas.

Celebrated war photographer Lee (Dunst) and long-term collaborator Joel (Wagner Moura) are joined by their mentor (Stephen McKinley Henderson), a veteran journalist "for what's left of The New York Times", plus Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla), an aspiring war photographer who sweet talks her way into the car, against Lee's better judgement.

Essentially a road movie, Civil War is a horrific journey to Oz. Across its two hours, it jumps between visceral, overwhelming violence and quieter, disturbing pockets of lifelessness, where abandoned cars and bodies ask audiences to imagine what came before.

In order to understand the weight of war journalists, the actors watched Under The Wire, a documentary on war correspondent Marie Colvin.

"It showed all the interpersonal relationships, [the journalists] going through the thoughts they were having every day," says Spaeny.

"That back and forth of 'do we keep pushing? How much danger do we get into to tell – to sacrifice our lives – for the truth?"

But context is not always available to the journalists, either. At one point, they find themselves in the cross hairs of a sniper stand-off, and a soldier, frustrated by Alex's questions about what side they're fighting, simplifies things: "Someone's trying to kill us. We are trying to kill them."

Civil War's 'in medias res' elements ('in the middle of things') frustrated audiences and critics expecting clearer or didactic political messaging, though Garland has repeatedly called it an "anti-war" work. (Glowing reviews credit it as an objective piece of filmmaking, mirroring the most powerful war journalism.)

Both Dunst and Spaeny say they never questioned the lack of context in the script.

"It would have easily made sense for any of us to ask that question," says Spaeny. "But we also understood it wasn't about what started [the war], it was the ending.

As Moura adds: "No reason explains the cost, the human cost of war."

Is this America?

Allusions to contemporary America throughout Civil War are clearest through the president (Offerman), who unmistakably echoes Trump through his red tie and a love of vague attribution ("some are calling it") and repetition ("a very great loss, a very great defeat") in speeches.

Elsewhere, a previous Antifa massacre mentioned in passing makes it ambiguous whether the group were victims or perpetrators. And the repeated reference to Charlottesville, a stop on their protracted drive, evokes the city's deadly clashes in 2017, where a white supremacist ploughed a car into anti-racism protesters, killing one person.

But it is the film's perceived lack of engagement in racial or socio-economic divides that have frustrated critics most, with some calling the film "apolitical" or a "failure of nerve". (Right wing outlets are too, with Breitbart's film critic calling it "the stupidest movie I've ever seen".)

Civil War's most intense and pivotal scene is the closest it gets to interrogating these familiar fault-lines. In it, a white soldier, played by Jesse Plemons (Dunst's husband), interrogates the journalists, screaming "Where are you from? What kind of American are you?"

Their answers – Colorado, Florida, Missouri – land with a weight that we can't understand, suggesting histories and cultures far removed from our own. But the line of questioning recalls the aggression, micro- or macro-, that lurks underneath asking someone with a foreign background "where are you from?"

"[It was] very, very hard for me personally, it was the most difficult scene," says Moura. "I'm Brazilian, right? I did not grow up here, although I'm an American citizen.

"The xenophobia and racism in that scene really affected me because this is another layer of polarisation — it's racism, xenophobia, anti-immigration, all those things."

A mammoth film

With a production budget of $US50 million, Civil War is the biggest film to date for both Garland and production company A24.

Unusually for a film of this scope, it was shot sequentially, allowing the actors to feel the weight of the journey's cumulative bloodshed. Arriving in the film's second half, the scene with Plemons was one of the hardest to shoot, says Spaeny.

"Alex [Garland] handles these topics in a very intelligent way. But also the way that scene was filmed, he shot it without the cameras breaking up that circle we were all in, so all the cameras are hidden," he explains.

"After a while, you do that scene that many times for two days straight, and it's just eventually going to get under your skin."

Spaeny calls journalists the "heroes of the story", but it is not always portrayed as noble work, as the group scavenge for the perfect shot or scoop.

Of the characters, it's the once unflappable Lee who begins to waver in her purpose. "I thought I was sending a warning signal home," she says. Across the journey, Jessie's eyes widen, at first in horror at what she witnesses, then in eagerness at what else she can capture.

It's also unclear who engages with their reporting – soldiers are unsure who they're shooting (as are the photographers, at times), with entire towns staying wilfully uninformed so they can focus on their green lawns and artisan shops.

Civil War probes more questions than answers, and perhaps most difficult to answer is what the purpose is of being a witness, though Moura says he believes in its power.

"We're all very proud of having made a film about war journalism," he says.

"There are some images that you can't really ignore."

Civil Wars is in cinemas now.