re: Critics are Raving About Alex Garland’s 'Civil War' 90% on RT

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When I worked on Ex Machina, [which was] about AI, people sometimes use the word ‘prescient’ or ‘predictive’ [to describe the film] and I always feel slightly embarrassed when people say that because at the time I wrote it, there was [already] a huge debate happening about it,” Garland said when asked about the film’s timing. “I think all of the topics in in [Civil War] have been a part of a huge public debate for years and years. These debates have been growing and growing in volume and awareness, but none of that is secret or unknown to almost anybody. I thought that everybody understands these terms and, at that point, I just felt compelled to write about it. If you cast your mind back to when I wrote this in June four years ago, there was an election coming and we’re dealing with Covid — the same conversations as now. Identical. So that’s where it came from.”

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Garland added that the film isn’t meant to specifically be a criticism of the United States. “America’s divisions are echoed almost precisely in many countries around the world,” the British filmmaker said. “In the case of America, there’s an extra danger given its power and importance in the world. America has an internal concept in its exceptionalism that means it feels it’s immune to some kinds of problems. One of the things history shows us is that nobody is immune. Nobody is exceptional. And if we don’t apply rationality and decency and thoughtfulness to these problems, in any place, it can get out of control … I’m not trying to locate [these problems] to America, that would be factually wrong. I can take you back home [to Britain] and can show you the same stuff happening in my country. But the implications here are much greater.”

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“Why are we talking and not listening?” he asked. “We’ve lost trust in the media and politicians. And some in the media are wonderful and some politicians are wonderful—on both sides of the divide. I have a political position and I have good friends on the other side of that political divide. Honestly, I’m not trying to be cute: What’s so hard about that? Why are we shutting [conversation] down? Left and right are ideological arguments about how to run a state. That’s all they are. They are not a right or wrong, or good and bad. It’s which do you think has greater efficacy? That’s it. You try one, and if that doesn’t work out, you vote it out, and you try again a different way. That’s a process. But we’ve made it into ‘good and bad.’ We made it into a moral issue, and it’s fricking idiotic, and incredibly dangerous … I personally [blame] some of this on social media. There is a an interaction that exists human-to-human that floats away when it reaches a public forum.”

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