America's Upcoming Civil War: Firmly Fiction or a Work of Prophecy

Civil war is the most dramatic and destructive expression of a nation hating itself almost to death. Why would they even make a movie called Civil War? you could well ask if you cared, but we don’t, we just enjoy the violence and the imagery on screen. Sitting in our less than comfortable cinema seat, alone, in a darkened almost empty theater, with no way to lower the volume of shot and shell, we feel smugly confident, safe, protected, after all, we think to ourselves, “this could never happen to us ” and with the next thought “but look how they are tearing their country apart!” Gleefully, we lap up the gratuitous violence as we watch the one-time armed-to-the-teeth bully/policeman of the world, America, reduced to the same fate it condemned so many smaller, weaker and less wealthy nations to over the long decades of the 20^th century.

Civil War is a story told through the eyes of a group of journalists, a team of two, a photog (Kirsten Dunst) and a writer (Wagner Moura), who drive almost 900 miles from New York to Washington DC to interview an embattled US President hunkered down in his capital. They take along two other journalists, an old hand, a writer for the New York Times (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and an ambitious junior photog just starting out in her career (Cailee Spaeny). Their road trip takes them to the edge of their frayed wits as they come face to face with their own mortality and end up witnessing a very Ghaddafi moment in the White House, documenting the capture and execution of the tyrant president.

 

I know Americans, I feel confident in calling a few my friends. I know how precious their freedoms and liberties are, I know how protective of their rights they are and how armed struggle is woven into the very fabric of their republic’s history and the importance of being well armed and ready is always top of mind. I can certainly understand the impulse to rebel against an impersonal and unfeeling federal government, especially one turned tyrant. The possibility of an actual conflagration always exists. In fact, most Americans already feel that things aren’t what they used to be, people are different, they seem polarized to such a degree that they would think nothing of committing violence against a political opponent, even taking a life. The world watched on January 6^th and saw for itself the marble edifice of this super state shake.

 

This movie came out of this heavy and thick primordial moral soup as Americans struggled to come to grips with their new reality. This shit just got real! So, you need a movie to reflect that, to take a serious and dramatic change to the political and social fabric of the country and present it in as clear and concise and unwaveringly honest a way possible. The movie seems to scream at its foolish audience, having walked into the lion’s den: “WHAT DID YOU EXPECT?! THIS IS WHAT WAR IS!” I kid you not, three out of the two other patrons in the theater with me walked out when Cailee’s character fell into a pit of freshly killed humans. I guess it was too much for them.

 

This is the kind of movie I like, it slaps you in the face, it makes no apologies. What?! Did you walk into the theater by mistake? Where you expecting a comedy perhaps? No, this movie does not suffer fools at all. Our four journalists on screen soon learn the all-too-real situation they are in and no one walks away unscathed, everyone breaks down. As fragile humans we are not meant to live through this, we just aren’t.

 

But what I would consider the crowing scene of the whole production, the point at which fun and games turns to tragedy in this film, is the scene with (I call him) Red Neck with Red Eye Wear. This situation I recognize. An attempt to talk sense into an armed thug, calling him ‘sir’, trying to reason with him, while all he sees before him is you his prey, and all his mind can focus on is who do I kill first. Of course, the scene ends in typical ‘Hollywood fashion’, but I forgive the director/writer/producer because the death that comes out of this scene makes the whole movie. 

 

Self-sacrifice so others may live is the brightest human quality, it is that precious dim light in the mayhem of war, it reminds us that we are still human. It also places upon the living such a debt to the dead that they can never fully repay. We can only try to repay it by living good and worthy lives. At least I hope that’s what the three remaining protagonists in the film got out of it.

 

Death is mundane and ordinary in war, but life can be bright and beautiful in the midst of hopelessness. Civil War isn’t a movie, in fact it should never have been made for so many reasons, but mostly, it shouldn't have been made for how the film will be unfairly compared in future to whatever possible real historical events that may unfold. 

 

America isn’t exceptional, its extraordinary, but also extremely susceptible to the same shocks and ups and downs that all other societies and nations around the world are susceptible to. Civil war is possible, but for that to happen in America in real life so many bad things have to happen first. Let’s hope this remains firmly a work of fiction and not of prophecy. But by all means watch it!