ALEX GARLAND IS no stranger to genre mischief. His three films as director,
Ex Machina, Annihilation
and
Men,
have all featured fantastical elements: murderous, sentient robots, alien shimmers and, well, men giving birth to men from unexpected orifices.
His latest,
Civil War,
though, looks a little more down-to-earth. “I’ve seen it described as sci-fi, but I don’t see it as sci-fi at all,” he tells
Empire.
“There’s no ‘sci’ in it, for a start.”
Whatever you want to call it, the film, starring Kirsten Dunst, Cailee Spaeny and Jesse Plemons, doesn’t seem any less discomforting than his back catalogue, focusing on violent unrest across America: an uprising which sees the White House under attack. Here, Garland tells us what he’s exploring.
THE STATES
Despite the lack of “sci”, the film is set in the immediate future: “any time from here to eight years forward”, says Garland. Regardless, America has been torn apart. “This is a kind of fracturing civil war,” he explains of the situation on the ground. “There are many, many factions and groups. It’s like the civil wars that one many competing forces with different agendas.” Here, the “western forces” of Texas and California —unlikely bedfellows, maybe —have teamed up to revolt against what looks like an oppressive US government. Why that specific union? “That’s embedded in the film,” he teases. “I tend not to spell things out in films. I sometimes feel overly spoon-fed by cinema, and so I probably just react against that. That question, why Texas and California, is a question that I want the audience to ask.”