The United States is waging a battle with itself. Well, at least it is in the new film “Civil War.” The director and cast are giving us a deeper look into the action thriller, and it’s intense.
News Anchor 1: “Nineteen states have seceded.”
News Anchor 2: “The United States Army ramps up activity.”
News Anchor 3: “The White House issued warnings to the Western Forces, as well as the Florida Alliance.”
Journalists try to survive as they cover a collapsing United States in “Civil War,” the latest film from “Ex Machina” and “Annihilation” director Alex Garland.
Wagner Moura (as Joel): “They’re moving to D.C. today.”
Kirsten Dunst (as Lee): “We need to go down there.”
Stephen McKinley Henderson (as Sammy): “They shoot journalists on sight in the capital. Every instinct in me says this is death.”
Alex Garland, director/writer: “Lots of civil wars are just disintegrations, and actually fighting as a means of not being killed, rather than fighting for a cause.”
Wagner Moura (as Joel): “You don’t know what side they’re fighting for?”
Soldier: “Someone’s trying to kill us. We are trying to kill them.”
Kirsten Dunst: “It just shows you what happens when polarization is so extreme.”
Alex Garland: “I was interested in what it is like to be risking your life to present, as much as you can, sort of objective, unbiased reporting, in the old-fashioned sense reporting, and find that the voice is silenced or ineffective within the noise of the broader context.”
Cailee Spaeny (as Jessie): “Why didn’t I just tell him not to shoot them?”
Wagner Moura (as Joel): “They were probably going to kill them anyway.”
Cailee Spaeny (as Jessie): “How do you know?”
Kirsten Dunst (as Lee): “He doesn’t know, but that’s besides the point. Once you start asking yourself those questions, you can’t stop. So we don’t ask. We record, so other people ask.”
Alex Garland: “So I wanted to put those people right in the heart of the narrative and show them as conflicted, compromised people, but performing something that requires courage and is also necessary.”
Cailee Spaeny: “I think he really relies on his audience to be intellectual and to inject their own beliefs.”
Kirsten Dunst: “But the way that Alex handled that through the eyes of these journalists, I think makes it in theory a human story, and what happens when people stop having conversations and treating each other like human beings.”
Kirsten Dunst (as Lee): “Every time I survived a war zone, I thought I was sending a warning home: ‘Don’t do this.’ But here we are.”
“Civil War” opens in theaters on Friday.
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