Civil War director Alex Garland on why his cautionary tale about the breakdown of American society is ‘just reporting’

The British filmmaker’s movie is about a United States at war with itself. The January 6 US Capitol riots affected its writing but it isn’t about that, he says

The director of Ex Machina and screenwriter of 28 Days Later talks about foreshadowing what could happen if ‘things collapse’ in a polarised America without fanning the flames

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Alex Garland at a screening of Civil War in Los Angeles. The British filmmaker talks about how he struck a “delicate balance” in his latest movie by giving a warning about the perils of a breakdown in society without tying it to current events. Photo: AFP

Published: 5:15pm, 11 Apr 2024Updated: 5:30pm, 13 Apr 2024

Corrected [5:27pm, 13 Apr, 2024]

[5:27pm, 13 Apr, 2024]
An earlier version of this story credited Alex Garland as the director of 28 Days Later. It has been corrected to state that he is that film’s screenwriter.

Alex Garland’s films have vividly conjured a virus-caused pandemic (2002’s 28 Days Later), an uncontrollable artificial intelligence (2014’s Ex Machina) and, in his latest, Civil War, a near-future America in the throes of all-out warfare.

Most filmmakers with such a record might claim some knack for tapping into the zeitgeist. But Garland does not see it that way. He is dealing, he says, with omnipresent realities that demand no great leaps of vision.

He wrote Civil War in 2020, when societies around the world were unravelling over the Covid-19 pandemic and the prospect of societal breakdown was on everyone’s minds.

“That was pretty deafening back then,” Garland says. “So in a way, it’s slightly past zeitgeist. It’s actually oppressive.”

Civil War is an ominous attempt to turn widely held American anxieties into a violent, unsettling big-screen reality.

Yet it is something far more oblique than its matter-of-fact title. The film, which Garland wrote and directed, is not mapped directly against today’s polarisation.