Editor-DN
The most anticipated movie Civil War It will hit theaters this week. Famous filmmaker Alex Garland (28 days later, Former Machinist, to annihilate, Men) wrote and directed the film, which is set in the near-future United States during a fictional civil war.
The film features big-name talent including Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons and Wagner Moura, and follows a group of journalists who travel through an American war zone, documenting it with photographs and arranging a major interview. let’s try.
The film comes before a directorial hiatus for Garland, who will focus more on writing for the foreseeable future. Below is a conversation between Garland and senior entertainment reporter Eli Glasner. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Eli Glasner: You wrote this movie (four years ago). As you get closer to us finally watching the movie, you start to see the direction of the next US election, how did you feel when you saw those two things collide?
Alex Garland: Uncomfortable. I think it’s complicated. It’s actually a very important question, and in some ways, I think it’s undemocratic to have the same election four years later. I think something should have changed for many different reasons…
I am left wing. I am a member of the Labor Party, which is the left wing party in the UK, for political health, I would always like my party not to win, because governments become corrupt when they are in power. for a long time.
And so, in those terms, it feels really troubling to me to run the same election again. It’s not really about individuals. It’s about this system and what it represents…. In my country and the United States, and many European countries and other places, in the Middle East, Asia and South America, social divisions and populists. There is a really serious and very strange problem with Politics, which thrives on and encourages this division, tends towards extremism.
EG: I think part of what makes this film so relatable is that you use things that are taken from an America that I recognize. I mean, the helicopter with the JC Penney sign burning in the background, the stadium…how hard was it to find scenes like that in America?
AG: It’s not difficult at all, because America is like any other big country. I think this is something that most people don’t understand. If you live in the West, you understand it. From the outside, of course, the West looks so rich in a way, just so rich, which of course it is, but there is a concentration of wealth. It is not widespread. And in America, and in my country, and in all these Western countries, there are really areas of extreme poverty.
And of course, that’s the engine of some anger – people saying, “When is the government going to do something about us?”
Alex Garland told CBC’s Eli Glassner how Jesse Plemons came to star in his new dystopian epic Civil War.
EG: I’m going to move on to your wonderful protagonist Lee. I look at your films – again and again, you seem inclined to write and tell stories about women, which is not an easy task for every writer. I wonder, is this just a coincidence, or something you really work on? Because Lee could be a man, right?
AG: Yes, she could have been. Honestly, I think it’s for two reasons. One is, I’m not really sure how anyone differentiates between men and women, anyway, and in all sorts of different ways.
But, I was born in 1970, I’m in my mid-50s. At the time when I was growing up and watching movies, pretty much every movie had a male lead. And… it’s not really a political act on my part. It’s just plain boring to write as a man because that’s all I used to see. So in some ways, I sit down to write this story, and I can write Lee as a bloke, or I can write him as a woman, and I’m a little more bored with the idea of him being a man. I feel.
look Alex Garland on Casting Jesse Plemons in Civil War: ‘It Wasn’t a Choice’: media)
EG: I have to ask about that scene between Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons (who are married in real life). What an interesting choice to bring him in.
AG: It wasn’t a choice. There was another actor who was going to do it. Well, he did before we were about to start shooting.
I was standing on the street, and he called me and said, “I’m really sorry. I can’t do this.” And I was obviously very polite and said, “Of course, I understand.” But inside I was thinking, “Oh my God, we’re totally screwed.” I got off the phone… and was going to the rehearsal with the actors. And I thought, “Oh, I should tell them, because they were expecting to work with this guy. It’s the right thing to do.”
And Kristen said, “Well, what if I ask Jesse?” And I said, “Do you think he’ll do that? Great!” And I think she must have read the script beforehand because she was going to do it. It’s in my memory, like, he just called him, said, “Do you think you can do it?” And 24 hours later, it was the same.
EG: What’s it like to see how close they are as partners on the day (shooting that scene)? It’s a scary scene, and I wonder what it was like, watching them go from lovers to adversaries in front of my camera?
AG: You know, they were just professionals and doing their job. I remember the day they kept their distance from each other. They weren’t really going out. In fact, Jesse, I remember, kept his distance from everyone that I could understand, except for all the other soldiers he was working with. When you see the scene, it feels like this.
EG: How do you make a film about war without falling into the glamorization, romanticization, adrenaline-fueled experience that we’ve seen war on the big screen so many times?
AG: We were just careful. I always, frankly, I hope, have to recognize that it’s a great group of people making a movie. Film is really a product of conversation. I know he is presented as a director. It really isn’t. And we talked about it a lot. We thought about it. We deliberately tried to avoid taking cues from cinema in some cases and mostly took cues from behavior, or action, or lived experience or documentaries or news footage, and really tried to follow that.
EG: Is this a warning? Are you presenting this as a bit of “Caution: The Road Ahead”?
AG: Well, I think so, but I’m a little allergic to the “I” in that sentence. Because my memory of four years ago, when I wrote this, is anxiety and frustration about public discourse and polarization and populism, and all those things were in common.
I am left wing. I have very good right-wing friends. What we’re discussing are things like how taxes are used or whether you have free markets or regulated markets. This is such a zone. But, somehow, we’re expected to start hating each other, or move it away from “this is a right argument or a wrong argument” to “you as Individuals are good or bad”. And there’s something about it that’s really silly. This is really flat out stupid.
So I felt nervous about it. I felt angry about it and realized that there are many other people who feel exactly the same way. Strange angry states occupy the polar extremes. It’s just that they are too loud. They have voices, and they use their voices and they bully and threaten in a certain way. And I thought, “Screw it, you motherfakers.” That’s what I thought.
“Writing it as a man is actually a little bit exhausting,” the Civil War filmmaker told CBC’s Eli Glessner.
