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can set it up this way. I'd like to

1:01

do a little bit of a spoiler-free, broad conversation

1:03

in the very beginning. And then we can

1:05

get into some spoiler stuff. And then we'll

1:07

share an interview that Jacob did with Alex

1:09

Garland in the back half of the show.

1:12

So I guess let's kick things off.

1:15

Just general thoughts, broad big picture takeaways.

1:18

What did you think about this movie, Bill? Yeah,

1:20

I think Civil War is easily

1:23

one of the most visceral movies to come

1:25

down the line in a long time in

1:29

totality as an experience in

1:31

the cinema. It is something

1:34

that I didn't necessarily think could still

1:36

happen in the sense that I, as

1:38

a big horror fan, as a big movie

1:40

fan in general, as kind of

1:42

a sicko myself, I didn't think I

1:45

could be as shaken by a movie as I

1:47

was by this one. But

1:50

I was. And it's,

1:52

again, because I'm a sicko, it thrilled me instead

1:54

of put me off. But

1:57

it's something where I didn't really.

2:00

until maybe 24 hours after seeing

2:02

it, that I was having

2:04

still such a kind

2:06

of unconscious or subconscious physical

2:10

reaction to being in that, however

2:12

long the film is, two-hour experience.

2:16

And I know that our colleague,

2:18

Brian Scott, has mentioned in a piece he

2:20

just wrote recently about the way that the

2:23

sound mix works in this movie, the gunfire

2:25

itself is just a

2:28

line to give you the audience member the most. And

2:31

realistic is maybe not the right word, it's

2:33

hyper real. It's that feeling of like you're

2:36

in the middle of these, you

2:38

know, battles, these skirmishes, as

2:41

the characters are, protagonists who are journalists are.

2:44

And at no point is it

2:46

intending to be, let's say

2:48

a hardcore Henry style POV experience,

2:51

and yet it really is

2:53

immersive in a similar way in terms of

2:55

like, you're not necessarily seeing it through

2:57

the exact eyes of a character or meant to

2:59

experience it as like, you know, video

3:02

game or a 3D movie at all. Yet

3:04

it still, I think, retains a lot of

3:07

the power of those first person experiences in

3:09

terms of putting you in the middle

3:11

of a situation. And part of it, and

3:13

we'll get into this obviously in the spoiler

3:16

section too, but part of it

3:18

is the ambiguity inherent in the movie,

3:20

which is absolutely intentional, is

3:23

part and parcel of putting you, the audience

3:25

member, on so much of that edge, you

3:27

know, for so long, because the less context

3:30

you have as a person, the

3:33

more unsettling it is, and that's all

3:35

feeding into this, you know, this realm

3:38

that Garland puts you into. So it's

3:40

a deliberately alienating, or not alienating, maybe

3:42

as much as aggressively

3:48

needling experience. And

3:50

it's something that obviously it's not gonna be

3:52

for everyone. So what was your take

3:54

on it, Ben? I literally just

3:56

got out of the theater, like

3:59

10 minutes ago. So I'm like kind

4:01

of I honestly couldn't even really tell

4:03

you if I liked the movie yet or not because

4:05

it's it's a lot I mean as you know you've

4:07

seen the movie anybody who's this movie will be able

4:09

to tell you it is a lot and especially Like

4:11

just walking out of it that kind of shaken feeling

4:13

that you alluded to That's

4:16

my primary emotion right now. I'm not quite sure

4:18

what I make of it as like an intellectual

4:20

exercise or any of that yet I'm still just

4:23

like experiencing it on that visceral level But

4:25

I can't tell you like once one specific thing that made

4:27

an impact on me And that is that I found there

4:29

to be a real artistry to

4:32

the construction of the movie that you

4:34

really feel as a viewer And what

4:36

I mean by that is there's artistry in

4:39

the construction of every movie the script Transitions

4:41

from one scene to the next the editing

4:43

cuts from one scene to the next blah

4:45

blah blah But most of the time you're

4:48

not really asked to think about those transitions

4:50

and here Alex Garland and his his team

4:52

of collaborators they really Underlined

4:55

several sequences by transitioning from

4:58

moments of almost serenity

5:01

to extreme chaos Just dropping you straight

5:03

into the middle of a shootout or

5:05

a firefight or something like that with

5:07

really no warning And there's like a

5:10

deliberate choice there to sort

5:12

of shock you awake as an audience member and

5:14

keep you on your toes but also like this

5:16

this sort of um Artistic

5:19

choice that fits in with the themes that

5:21

he's exploring here You know the perils of

5:23

war and the extremity of violence and the

5:25

fact that bullets don't really recognize lines on

5:27

a map and all of that stuff too,

5:29

so I just was really

5:31

drawn to and

5:33

impressed by the way that the movie Chose

5:37

how to Drop you

5:39

from one scene into another if that makes any sense Oh,

5:42

it makes little sense and I think that you're hitting

5:44

upon something that is really unique to

5:46

this film Maybe

5:49

not wholly unique I know that some

5:51

of Garland's touchstones that he's mentioned in the

5:53

press several times including I think Jacob's interview

5:56

at least at one point is you know

5:58

he'll talk about stuff like of course,

6:00

Kubrick's Fullmetal Jacket, Coppola's Apocalypse

6:02

Now, and Klimov's Common

6:04

Sea from 1985, the Soviet anti-war

6:06

film, all of which have their

6:09

moments, or in Common Sea's case,

6:11

entirety, of just being

6:13

really oppressively upsetting. And it's

6:15

taking away what I

6:17

think a lot of us tend to

6:20

assume about the war film, which is,

6:22

yeah, you're expecting in any general, given

6:24

war film, you're not expecting to go

6:26

in super jazzed about seeing

6:28

people getting shot or blown up

6:30

or anything, because usually even the

6:32

most jingoistic war film

6:34

has an element of war

6:36

is hell, it's not that

6:38

great, yada, dada, and this really

6:40

goes a step further than a lot of

6:43

war films would be even used to in

6:45

the last couple decades, even, if not longer

6:47

than that, which is repositioning

6:50

it to be the most

6:52

horrific experience possible. And

6:55

yeah, again, speaking as I would

6:57

consider myself primarily a horror fan,

7:00

with the horror genre, there is that unspoken

7:02

tenet between audience and filmmaker of like, you

7:04

know you're here to get scared, we know you're here

7:07

to get scared, so it's gonna be a

7:09

little bit of a haunted house kind of fun thing,

7:11

maybe it will push your boundaries, but maybe not too

7:13

far sort of thing. I feel like there's

7:15

maybe a social contract with the war film that American

7:18

or Western audiences haven't really been exposed

7:20

to as much, and

7:22

this really recontextualizes that. Yeah,

7:24

yeah, okay, so I

7:27

wanna, there's so many like, spoilery things that I wanna talk to

7:29

you about. Anything else that

7:31

we should mention before we dive into

7:34

spoilers? Like any last, I guess, last

7:36

calls for people who might

7:38

not, or might be like on the fence about whether or

7:40

not they should see this, what would you say to people

7:42

like that? I would

7:44

say absolutely know your limits in

7:46

terms of how much, you

7:49

know, seeing images upsets you in

7:51

terms of violence, in terms of visceralness,

7:53

in terms of, obviously,

7:55

I think honestly something you should consider is lack

7:57

of context, if it's gonna upset you, don't

8:00

quite have the lines demarcated in

8:02

this movie about who are the

8:04

quote-unquote good guys and bad guys, who are

8:07

even the conflicts, you

8:10

know, people involved in the war itself, you know.

8:12

If that's going to be too upsetting

8:15

to you, then you probably don't want to have this experience.

8:17

But if it's intriguing, if it's thought-provoking,

8:20

if it's something that

8:22

you want to go into, I think you're going to come out

8:25

shaken maybe, but ultimately thrilled

8:27

to really have such a

8:30

unique experience at the cinema that I, again,

8:32

I'd have to go back to those films I mentioned earlier, you

8:35

know, in terms of having something with this

8:37

context and this genre, you know, to

8:40

come along in a while. Yeah, it really does

8:42

feel special that A24 put this movie out

8:44

in the year 2024. I mean,

8:46

I know that we have an election coming up and all of

8:48

that, and that was kind of like what I was thinking of

8:51

a lot when I saw the trailers for this movie of like,

8:53

oh, God, I don't know if I want

8:55

to sit through this in an election year.

8:57

But I will say to the movie's credit,

8:59

I didn't think really that much about our

9:03

modern political landscape very much. I

9:05

was very immersed in this world

9:08

and this sort of alternate reality

9:10

that Garland had created. Whereas

9:12

before I was really dreading like, oh,

9:15

God, I'm going to be drawing parallels between this character

9:17

and this real life figure and all that stuff. And

9:19

I will just say that for

9:21

me, the movie was so effective that

9:23

I kind of closed down. I mean,

9:26

of course, there are images

9:28

and certain things that

9:30

it's like inescapable to think about. But

9:33

for the most part, I was very mesmerized by what

9:35

he had here. So if that was a fear for

9:37

you going in like it was for me, take

9:40

my experience with a grain of salt. But

9:42

that's how I went into it and came out of it. So,

9:44

okay, let's get into some spoilers stuff here, Bill.

9:47

There's two things I want to talk to you

9:49

about. The Winter Wonderland

9:51

sniper scene, I just found to be

9:53

like incredibly tense. Sort of fantastic, just

9:56

really small, small scale

9:58

like piece of storytelling. I

10:00

just thought that was exceptionally well done. Did you have

10:02

any thoughts about that scene? Yeah,

10:04

I love, again, there's a,

10:09

I obviously would consider Garland a

10:11

genre filmmaker, and typically up till

10:13

now he's dabbled mostly in

10:15

science fiction, little bit of horror

10:17

as well. I

10:19

think he's more the type

10:22

to introduce horror elements into a science fiction premise

10:24

rather than the other way around, but one

10:28

of the aspects of that scene that's so great is the

10:30

perverseness of how it is incredibly tense,

10:32

it's incredibly claustrophobic, and yet it's taking

10:34

place in this huge open

10:36

field in bright, broad daylight. So

10:39

it has the incongruity that

10:41

the rest of the film has as a

10:43

theme, but maybe that's the scene that's the

10:46

best visual exposition of that

10:49

incongruity, where in normal

10:51

life you would look at that setting and go,

10:53

oh, I'm fairly safe here, and

10:56

it could be further from the truth. Even

10:58

the fact that it's decorated

11:00

with all of these holiday Christmas

11:02

trappings, which, of course,

11:04

is typically coded as, oh, here's

11:06

comfort, here's warmth, here's home

11:09

and hearth and present giving and

11:11

cookies, and yet people are being

11:13

sniped at. And

11:15

the fact that- And you don't even see the

11:17

sniper too. That's what you were talking about before,

11:20

yeah. He's a

11:22

disembodied, almost

11:24

omnipotent threat, and

11:27

ultimately when he or she,

11:29

we have no idea, but this person is taken

11:32

care of at the end of the

11:34

scene so that our protagonists can continue their journey. We

11:37

never see their body, we never see how

11:39

many of them there were. We assume it was just one. So

11:42

it's this nebulous threat, which,

11:45

again, is used

11:47

in the scene to extrapolate this

11:52

major theme of the movie, which is when

11:56

Joel, when Magna Moore is a character, who is

11:58

the- more

12:00

writer type of journalist as opposed to

12:03

Kirsten Dunst, you know Lee Smith's photojournalist

12:05

and Kelly Spani's as well. Joel

12:08

asks you know these soldiers who are firing back at a

12:10

sniper like well how did this start like who is that

12:13

other person out there who are you guys who's

12:15

representing what side and they said they

12:17

say essentially you know well it doesn't matter like we're trying to

12:20

kill the person that's trying to kill us. Right

12:22

yeah and it's almost like ideology has gone out the

12:24

window like it doesn't even really matter what they're fighting

12:26

for at that point too which I think is what

12:28

the the movie kind of focuses on as well. So

12:31

the Jesse Plemons thing we got to talk about that I

12:33

mean that theme is like so viscerally

12:35

upsetting and like I mean obviously there's like the

12:37

real world this is what I was talking about

12:40

where like there are some aspects of this movie

12:42

that you kind of can't put the

12:44

real world out of your mind and like you

12:47

know him asking people where they're from and all

12:49

of that and then just shooting these people I

12:51

mean it was just like so brutal and so

12:53

upsetting to watch and like

12:55

I can't it's

12:57

one of the most upsetting things I've seen a

13:00

long time on on screen though I know that

13:02

this movie is not like you know we talked

13:04

about what Eli Ross Thanksgiving where like things

13:06

like very over-the-top violence or whatever but

13:09

this is like disturbing in

13:11

a very real way and and

13:13

just kind of rattled me to my

13:15

core seeing this scene so what did you think about this?

13:19

There I'm gonna pull

13:21

from my real life here there was

13:23

a moment when I moved from

13:26

where I used to live or grew up

13:28

as a young kid and then moved with my family

13:31

to Michigan to grow up the rest of the way

13:34

in third grade and oh

13:36

actually this might have been second grade so cut that part

13:39

out so in second grade there

13:42

was a kid he came up to me on the playground one

13:44

day we had never met this kid and I

13:47

never interacted before at all and

13:49

this kid point-blank just said

13:51

to me on the playground one day you

13:53

owe me five dollars and at

13:55

first I was like well that's ridiculous we've never met

13:57

before I don't have any standing debts with you I

14:00

don't know you any money and he said now you

14:02

want me $10 and I'm like why

14:04

is it going up? What's happening here? Am I

14:07

suddenly on the hook for $10? I don't have $10. Where am I gonna

14:09

get $10? And he said now

14:11

you want me $15. So for him it was

14:14

this kind of sick sadistic little playground

14:16

game And I you know

14:19

at that time I as the victim did not

14:21

know how Real

14:23

he was playing it in terms of like did he really expect

14:25

me to give him money? Was he just trying to tease me

14:27

and get me upset? So watching

14:30

this Jesse Plimmon scene it

14:32

had that connotation for me of like when you as a

14:34

as a Supposedly rational logical

14:36

human being are dealing with someone who

14:38

is operating on a completely different level

14:41

of Rational and logic for

14:43

them, you know if for us

14:45

rational people he seems totally insane, of course

14:48

But he also has that

14:50

conviction that the insane tend

14:52

to have which is yeah I'm

14:54

operating on my own set of rules. You don't know what

14:57

those rules are so at any point you

14:59

could make the wrong move and then it's over for

15:01

you because I have all the power and the You

15:03

know the depth here and it is

15:05

yeah easily the most terrifying. I

15:08

think I've seen Plemons It's like his Breaking

15:10

Bad character turned up to you know, 20.

15:12

Mm-hmm. It's crazy Yeah, and

15:14

and I think also like obviously the racial

15:16

dynamics at play You

15:18

know you and I are a couple white guys sitting here on

15:20

this podcast talking about it we're gonna have a different experience than

15:23

a lot of other people who watch this movie and I mean

15:26

fortunately for us Unfortunately

15:28

for society at large this scene is

15:30

gonna resonate in a much different way

15:32

with a lot of other people too

15:34

so You know, we

15:36

got to got to underline that for sure

15:38

But I think it's taking place the entire

15:41

scene takes place next to a mass grave

15:43

Which eventually, you know, Jesse's

15:45

character falls into and has to

15:47

experience that Uncanny valley

15:50

of like I'm I'm with these

15:52

corpses and yet I'm not and yet am

15:54

you know that that strangeness as

15:56

well It's yeah,

15:58

it's movie full of

16:00

upsettingly visceral scenes, it might be the most.

16:05

The aftermath of that scene too is so important

16:07

I think because you see the consequences of like

16:09

the truly evil actions of that Jesse

16:11

Clemens character and how they kind of ripple

16:14

through people like Kaylee Spammi's character throwing up

16:16

in the car and then of course Stephen

16:18

McKinley Henderson's character is shot and ultimately dies

16:20

from that but like there's you

16:22

know I think the movie does a

16:24

good job of not just making it feel

16:26

episodic. I mean the movie does feel episodic in

16:29

some ways you know there's there's this little adventure

16:31

that they have and then they go to like

16:33

the the stadium which kind

16:35

of feels like a little bit of a sanctuary and

16:37

they have some bonding moments and then they move on

16:39

to this and it does feel like they

16:41

are going from A to B and hitting

16:43

dots along the way but but

16:46

I think by showing the

16:48

immediate aftermath of the scene and not just cutting

16:50

away and picking up the action hours or days

16:53

later or whatever I think that really contributes

16:56

to the power of the scene right like the by

16:59

by really like sitting in that moment and

17:01

letting these characters feel the

17:04

experience and the the wave

17:06

the aftershocks almost of what they just went

17:09

through. Oh yeah and I was gonna say

17:11

when you mention you know when

17:13

you mentioned Spani, Jesse vomiting in the car afterwards

17:15

I remember watching it for the first time thinking

17:17

in my back of my mind that's maybe the

17:19

most realistic vomit scene I've ever seen in the

17:21

movie ever yeah which is a

17:23

dubious honor but you know it's it

17:26

certainly speaks to how very

17:29

similar to this this movie is in terms of I

17:31

know I just made up that word it's fine but

17:33

it's it's something that you know had that

17:36

had that moment been just a little bit

17:38

more inauthentic or you know

17:40

plastic in terms of the usual thing we're used to

17:42

with vomiting on screen where it's like oh yeah it's

17:44

a pea soup or you know whatever it

17:48

just it had that that that resonance of

17:50

like oh god that really just happened yeah

17:53

yeah it feels human in a way so

17:56

I guess I'm trying to think

17:58

of I know we We don't really have

18:00

a ton of time to get into like a beat by

18:02

beat breakdown of this movie or anything. I

18:05

want to talk to you about like what this movie

18:07

is actually about and like

18:09

what you think your your read on what Garland is

18:12

trying to say here might be. Before

18:14

we get to that though, I just wanted to open the

18:16

floor to you and see if there were any other scenes

18:18

that you wanted to shout out or moments that you wanted

18:20

to highlight anything like that before we get into sort of

18:22

like the closing

18:24

of our conversation here. Yeah,

18:27

well I think I'll use it as a

18:29

gateway into this final topic which

18:32

is one of the I

18:34

think maybe the most surprising scene

18:37

when first watching the film but in

18:39

retrospect is not at all surprising that

18:41

it's included is what I

18:43

would call the Oasis scene where

18:46

kind of in the middle of the film

18:48

kind of in the middle of their journey

18:50

they come upon they being the journalists that

18:52

are traveling from New York City to DC

18:54

in the press van that's the general general

18:56

scope of the movie's road movie journey. In

19:00

the middle of that they come across this town

19:02

which unlike everything else that they've

19:04

been seeing and will be seeing later on

19:06

where you know the or the America has

19:08

been turned into a war zone you know

19:10

not unlike what we're used to seeing and

19:12

sort of a post-apocalyptic movie of just you

19:14

know cars thrown around the highway abandoned and

19:17

all that stuff. In the

19:19

middle of that they've come across this

19:21

town which looks completely harmless it's you

19:23

know kind of almost 1950s perfect and it's

19:25

you know manicured lawns

19:27

and everything and people blissfully

19:31

going about their days and they

19:33

end up at a dress shop on Main Street of

19:36

that town and Joel you

19:38

know again wanting to interview

19:40

people speaks to the woman

19:42

at the desk manning the shop and says you

19:44

know don't you know there's a civil war going

19:46

on out there and you guys are

19:49

you aware of what's happening I mean are you okay

19:51

like what's what he's kind of trying to fish about

19:53

like how is this possible and the woman

19:55

is essentially just trucking and saying oh well you know yeah we've heard

19:57

about it we just kind of keep out of it. And

20:02

not only if you take

20:05

this movie as, say, a

20:08

modernized version of even Joseph Conrad's

20:10

Heart of Darkness, which Apocalypse Now

20:12

is a remake of, or

20:15

adaptation of, you have

20:17

typically in your survivalist story, whether it's

20:19

in a jungle or a desert, this

20:22

moment where, or

20:24

if you're at sea, there's the sirens on the

20:26

rock who are calling you to a more blissful

20:29

state or something. You have this element

20:31

of the journey where you're thinking

20:33

that maybe you can get

20:36

off the boat and escape and not worry about all

20:38

the issues that you have to deal with in the

20:40

rest of your journey or the rest of your life.

20:44

And not only does this have a connotation in

20:46

our, obviously, real lives in this

20:49

society, this country, in terms of

20:52

ignorance is bliss and all of that aspect to

20:54

it. But it's also another

20:57

– it's an uncanny valley on top

20:59

of an uncanny valley because – and

21:01

this is getting into the larger topic you wanted to get

21:03

to in terms of what Garland's doing with this movie and

21:05

what I think it's about. I

21:08

think Garland as an artist, as a filmmaker,

21:10

is someone who is always looking to transform

21:14

the normal or

21:16

the average or the assumed into the

21:18

uncanny. He's looking to create a liminal

21:20

space out of something that

21:22

we tend to assume

21:24

is average or not

21:27

even worth mentioning. So

21:30

obviously there's really some obvious huge

21:32

examples of that like 28 Days Later being

21:35

the movie that kind of resurged

21:37

the zombie subgenre even

21:40

though they're not zombies, quote unquote, but whatever. But

21:44

turning London into a post-apocalyptic

21:46

state and even the fact that Danny

21:48

Boyle, the director of that movie, was

21:50

shooting with DV cameras making everything look

21:52

really grainy and immediate and visceral was

21:54

that version – that movie's version of

21:56

turning familiar into the unfamiliar. And then

21:58

you have something like that. like Annihilation,

22:00

which I think is strangely

22:02

this movie's closest antecedent in his filmography,

22:05

where you have this group of people

22:08

venturing willingly into a strange

22:10

land that they have to somehow

22:12

understand and survive through and document

22:15

and just observe really in order

22:17

to figure out if there's any

22:20

sort of coexistence going forward, you

22:22

know, the old world and this

22:24

new world. Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

22:27

I really think that Garland, I mean, there's been a

22:29

lot of, obviously, you're going to see a lot of

22:31

debate continue over this weekend, if not the last next

22:34

several months or years, depending on how long it stays

22:36

in the conversation, about what

22:38

this movie's relationship is to, you know, modern

22:40

day politics, what this movie's relationship is to

22:42

America itself. I

22:45

don't know how much Garland was really conceiving of

22:47

that. And I know Jacob's interview, what

22:49

he says in that interview goes into a little bit

22:51

of that as well. I think

22:53

he was interested in giving Americans

22:55

in particular, but just the world in

22:57

general, an experience that they're not really

23:00

at all used to, which is most movies

23:03

about America as a

23:06

war-torn country tend to have that element

23:08

of genre to them. It's aliens, it's

23:10

zombies, it's, you know,

23:12

it's vampires, whatever, a metaphor,

23:14

essentially, for what we have

23:16

seen in other countries, you know, in

23:18

the past and even modern day, you know, even the hill.

23:21

So it's giving us

23:23

privileged Americans the experience of

23:26

what if our country was like those. It's

23:30

not necessarily a common, unlike whether that's, you

23:32

know, good, evil, you

23:34

know, right wing, left wing, it's just

23:36

sort of this, you know,

23:39

here's what we haven't had to deal with yet and

23:41

we may have to in the future. Who

23:43

knows? Yeah, yeah. And I think that

23:45

goes back to it being like designed to

23:47

be kind of an upsetting experience, you know,

23:49

on the far-on-the- smaller

24:00

scale that can be

24:02

a violent thing like institutional knowledge can be

24:04

passed down, but there can be

24:07

personal and individual human costs to that like in

24:09

this movie, there's literal violence, you know, with gunfire

24:11

and all that kind of stuff, but it can

24:13

apply to a bunch of different fields

24:16

and jobs. And maybe it's just because this

24:18

movie is about journalists, but

24:20

I thought a lot about our industry

24:22

and like the tumultuous changes that has

24:24

gone through in the past handful of

24:27

years, most of which have been terrible,

24:29

big time and like the violence

24:31

that those changes have wrought on many

24:33

of our former colleagues and friends. And

24:36

I think this movie is kind of, it's

24:38

big enough to work as

24:41

the straightforward surface level thriller about journalists trying

24:43

to track down a president interview him during

24:45

this conflict, but it's also big enough, I

24:47

think to contain all sorts of different interpretations

24:49

and readings into it. And like the passing

24:51

of the torch between Kirsten Dunne's character, who's

24:53

Kirsten Dunne is great, by the way, we

24:55

haven't really said that, yeah, we haven't really

24:57

had a ton of time to talk much

24:59

about the performances. And unfortunately, we're running running

25:02

very long time. So we don't have time to really get into

25:04

it. But she's awesome. You

25:06

know, the passing of the torch between her to Kaylee

25:08

Spaney and that the arc of that character and

25:11

or that dynamic and how that plays out

25:14

in this movie, that that

25:16

stuck out to me as like one of the big talking

25:18

points or one of the big sort of thematic explorations that

25:20

he was getting into here. But I

25:23

feel like Garland is one of the

25:25

best modern filmmakers at making movies that

25:27

people can talk about and have reads

25:29

on and have takes on that are

25:31

like wildly different and still feel

25:34

like you're right and justified in thinking that

25:36

way. You know, like there are a

25:39

lot of directors just

25:42

make movies that don't have the

25:44

space for that kind of stuff. And I feel like

25:46

Alex Garland goes out of his way to put the

25:48

space into his movie. So I always appreciate that from

25:50

him. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think one of the dissonance

25:53

that people have trouble with him is the fact that

25:55

he is so deliberately open

25:57

in that way. Ampicuous is another word

25:59

I guess. you could use and it's something

26:01

that we're not used to with our auteurs, you know,

26:03

where usually when you think of an auteur you think,

26:06

oh, they have such a huge specific

26:08

particular view on the world and

26:10

people and, you know, their characters

26:12

and their genres and their tones

26:15

and I think there's a lot of consistency in Garland

26:17

in the way that most auteurs have that consistency to

26:19

them and their work and yet as you just said,

26:22

there's so much room to put yourself in

26:24

there, the individual viewer and, you know, that's

26:27

going to be frustrating for some. For

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a company, you can trust. Okay, Alex Garland

27:01

can be kind of a prickly interview subject.

27:03

I interviewed him several years ago for Annihilation

27:05

and he was somewhat intimidating but I think

27:07

Jacob had a really good conversation with him

27:09

and there were some really good observations

27:11

and anecdotes in this that I'm going to be thinking

27:14

about for quite some time. So here is Jacob's interview

27:16

with Alex Garland. So Civil

27:18

War feels like to me a historical film from the

27:20

alternate universe where it kind of expects you already understand

27:22

the basics of the war. I feel like I'll say

27:24

in private Ryan or Dunkirk, don't need to tell you

27:26

how World War II started. Right. Do

27:29

you view it this way or how do you come about with this perspective? I

27:34

think you could extrapolate how

27:38

this came about from bits

27:40

of information contained within the

27:42

film personally. I

27:45

also think that the

27:48

film doesn't come out of nowhere. It

27:51

comes out of a

27:53

sense of anxiety about the nature

27:56

of populist politics and

27:58

division and extremists. behavior

28:01

as well as extremist thinking and

28:05

I think that's pretty shared

28:07

actually. I think

28:10

a lot of people feel that and they

28:12

have their own internal sense that they already

28:14

arrive with about why that exists. Now

28:17

people might not agree that their versions

28:20

of account of how that might exist

28:22

might differ but

28:24

the anxiety I think is

28:26

quite broadly shared and

28:30

so I'm also relying on

28:34

people's own sense of a situation as

28:36

well as things that

28:38

are marked

28:41

within the film itself. I

28:43

think one of the most surprising things about the

28:46

film is I think some people myself included may

28:48

have expected the premise to lead to more grandstanding

28:50

but instead the film kind of

28:52

exists in almost, I don't want to say

28:54

neutral place but a place where the suggestion

28:57

is that once the violence starts, once the bullets

28:59

are flying, the reasons don't

29:01

matter as much because people are dying.

29:03

Was that always your intention that once

29:06

the war starts that no longer matters?

29:10

It's partly that. That's

29:12

definitely part of it. I

29:14

think it's true that sometimes combat,

29:19

it loses its reasons to

29:21

exist quite quickly

29:23

and then becomes

29:26

just about things like staying alive or not

29:28

being killed or killing the person who's trying

29:30

to kill you and it can just fold

29:33

down into that state. But

29:38

there's something else actually on a personal

29:40

level, there's something else which is really

29:42

to do with journalism and

29:45

it's to do with, this is a

29:47

product partly of me being middle aged

29:49

I think, but it's to do with

29:52

an old fashioned form of

29:54

journalism which was reporting and

29:59

bias in in the terms that

30:01

you mean it, which I think grandstanding

30:05

implies bias, that

30:08

was not permitted within a

30:11

certain kind of news reporting

30:14

as an ideological position, the

30:17

ideology being connected

30:20

to a

30:23

belief within journalism that journalism needed to

30:25

be trusted. And so

30:27

if it was overtly propagandist, it would

30:29

be defeating its own aims, and its

30:32

aims were societal. It was to be

30:34

a check and a balance and holding

30:36

a government to account. And

30:38

in order to hold a government to account when

30:41

a government is corrupt, which governments will do, they

30:43

will at times be very

30:45

corrupt, and in order to hold

30:47

them to account, you have to

30:49

be trusted. So that

30:53

has certainly been eroded. It's

30:56

been eroded because it's been under attack

30:58

deliberately by politicians who seek to erode

31:00

it for their own reasons. I

31:03

think also social media has

31:05

accelerated and changed the terms

31:07

and the space in which

31:09

journalism sits. But it's

31:11

also because many journalistic institutions

31:14

have completely abdicated that responsibility

31:16

and have tilted hard towards

31:18

bias, which

31:20

means tilting hard towards propaganda. And

31:24

they do that because they're trying to maintain an

31:26

audience, and the audience needs

31:29

to be maintained as a relationship

31:31

with advertising, so money. And

31:35

a consequence of that, there are various consequences,

31:37

but one of them is they

31:39

might be trusted by the choir they're

31:42

preaching to, but they're not trusted by

31:44

any of the other choirs. And so

31:46

a generalized sense of distrust in journalism

31:49

starts to exist. So that

31:51

concerns me. I don't like

31:53

it. I grew up around journalists. I

31:57

know they can be spiky or conflicted

31:59

or compromised. or any number of different

32:01

things, but that we really need them.

32:05

And there's a difference between the role they play

32:07

and what they might be like as individuals. They're

32:09

just not the same thing. And

32:12

I want to trust journalists. So

32:14

the film attempts

32:16

to function like old-fashioned

32:19

reporters. And

32:21

in a way what old-fashioned reporters

32:23

would do, not that they don't

32:25

exist anymore, they would do, they

32:27

exist surrounded by this noise

32:30

which diminishes their

32:33

traction. What

32:36

they would do is in a sense say, this

32:38

is what I observed. And

32:40

then it would be up to the reader

32:42

in the old days or the viewer to

32:45

take their own meaning from that.

32:47

But what they didn't do was

32:49

distrust what the journalist was saying

32:52

they observed. Do

32:54

you see what I mean? I don't know if

32:56

I'm clear in that. You are. And that reminds me of the

32:58

moment in the movie that really stuck out to me where the

33:01

journalist characters are interacting with characters

33:03

from all sides of the conflict.

33:05

They share cigarettes, they embed themselves. There

33:08

is no sense of this is the team we're rooting for. It's

33:10

a sense of this is where the story is and we're going

33:12

to follow it. Exactly. Because

33:14

as journalists, they

33:16

would be abstracting themselves from

33:19

rooting. They're not

33:21

interested in rooting. They're actually in fact one

33:23

of them comments on this at a certain

33:25

point. Like what

33:27

we do is observe

33:30

it so other people are

33:32

asking questions in a certain kind of way. So the

33:35

film is attempting to function something

33:37

like that. I

33:39

think one thing that helps your

33:41

case here is that you talk about

33:43

this in various Q&As and interviews

33:46

already about the idea of not romanticizing the war. And

33:49

not making it feel exciting. There really is

33:52

a horror element to how the gunfights and

33:54

the battle sequences play out. Especially

33:56

in the sound design. I would love to know the conversations

33:58

you had in post with your... Sound designers

34:00

and mixers that guarantee that those bullets never

34:03

sounded exciting. They always sounded terrifying I

34:06

can say that I'm actually very

34:08

pleased you said that the

34:11

answer is that a gun sound

34:14

is in

34:17

a way terrifying a Modern

34:22

automatic rifle or machine gun or

34:24

50 caliber machine whatever it happens

34:26

to be These

34:28

are machines that are constructed to

34:30

kill that that that is

34:33

what they're there for and They

34:36

do this in this incredibly

34:38

efficient Fashion and there

34:41

is something sinister in

34:43

the noise of something that really

34:45

only exists for that purpose and

34:48

So what we did was we

34:50

used exactly those noises we

34:53

we used Gun

34:58

that fired blanks and we put full flash

35:00

blanks in them and we recorded that noise

35:03

as faithfully as we could That

35:05

will include The sound

35:07

of the gun but also the way it reacts

35:09

with objects around it So

35:13

a huge effort

35:15

in the film related to reality

35:17

and the the grammar of either

35:21

lived experience or news photography

35:23

or documentaries and and

35:26

we were doing that in many many ways throughout the

35:29

film, but hugely to do sound

35:31

design and Where

35:33

something happened that meant a bit

35:35

of recorded noise Didn't

35:38

work for one reason or another it can

35:40

be to do with the distortion. It spikes

35:42

too much for its is

35:44

or whatever We

35:46

would then just record Real

35:49

guns firing and use that so

35:51

so film Sometimes

35:53

we'll do little tricks to do

35:56

with using sub bass or extra

35:59

noises And what those

36:01

extra sounds do is they slightly

36:03

distance you from the stark, aggressive

36:06

sound of an automatic

36:09

weapon firing. Film

36:11

has a way sometimes of being

36:14

subtly reassuring within

36:18

the context of action

36:20

or violence. And what

36:22

we did was, where possible, tried

36:25

to remove those reassurances as much

36:27

as possible. In

36:31

ultra-philography, there's this ongoing interest

36:33

in the transformation and mutation

36:35

of people, nature, technology. And

36:38

in Civil War, there's the transformation or mutation

36:40

of an entire nation and society. Do

36:42

you see this as a direct correlation or extension

36:45

on your previous ideas, or would you

36:47

view this as something new entirely? That's

36:50

an interesting question. I

36:53

think it probably relates to all of the others. I

36:56

think that the only

36:58

thing is I'd probably frame it slightly differently

37:01

in my own mind for whatever that's worth,

37:04

which is it's more about how

37:09

subjective everything

37:12

is. That we perceive

37:14

it as being objective, because we're seeing

37:16

through our eyes and we're having our

37:18

responses and we attribute truth

37:20

to those things, sort of factual

37:23

reality to those things. I

37:26

think everything is just much

37:28

more subjective than it seems to be.

37:31

And actually, polarisation is in a

37:33

way a demonstration of that. Because

37:37

I think sometimes people in

37:40

polarised states are

37:42

not actually, I'm not talking

37:44

about everybody, I'm talking about some

37:46

people within polarised states, are

37:49

not exactly bad people. They

37:52

are just people who cannot conceptualise

37:54

the other side of

37:56

the argument. And that

37:59

is... a

38:02

consequence of subjectivity, if

38:05

you see what I mean. And

38:09

so what I'm trying

38:11

to do often is walk

38:13

towards subjectivity because I think

38:15

it's there and sort of

38:17

exist within it. So scenes

38:20

in films that I make that might

38:22

seem very surreal or dreamlike or

38:26

strange, I think

38:29

are in a way

38:31

representations of reality, however strange

38:34

that might sound. And

38:36

I can give an example of it in

38:38

Civil War, where there's

38:41

a scene in Civil War that takes place

38:43

around a bunch of abandoned Christmas decorations

38:46

from like a Christmas

38:48

fair, which looks like a

38:50

self-conscious bit of surrealism

38:54

that has been created by a production

38:56

designer and inserted into the

38:59

film. But actually we found all

39:01

that stuff abandoned in a field

39:04

about 100 yards from where we shot it. We

39:07

just dragged it 100 yards further up the road

39:09

for various reasons. And

39:12

that thing, you're driving through Georgia

39:14

in early summer and then you

39:17

find a bunch of abandoned Christmas

39:19

stuff, a polar bear and a

39:21

penguin, and a

39:23

weird box that has mannequins in it that

39:25

is loosely set up to look like maybe

39:28

a nativity scene or something like that, that

39:31

is the weirdness of real life.

39:35

And so it's not a bit of surrealism, it's

39:37

a bit of realism, bizarrely.

39:42

Without going into like, I don't want to spoil the

39:44

film for anybody who's reading this or hearing it before,

39:46

so I'll dance lightly here. But

39:48

in a way this film is building toward what

39:51

feels like the most famous photograph in this fictional

39:53

history. The film's climax is about a photograph and

39:55

about a photograph that everybody in this

39:58

world has. that all of the

40:00

universe I see in every history textbook has seen all of

40:02

the news, everybody knows it. What's

40:05

always the intention to build toward a photograph

40:07

that has the weight of something that feels

40:10

like it was monumental? Do

40:13

you know what? I

40:15

wish I could say yes, because that's such

40:17

a smart idea. It

40:20

would be such a neat resolution

40:23

to the film in a kind of theming way. That

40:26

had never occurred to me until you stated

40:28

it. I was just

40:31

showing war photographers doing what

40:33

they do, or actually just press photographers

40:35

doing what they do. And because they're

40:37

good at what they do, they capture

40:39

iconic moments. That's

40:43

a much more elegant version of that. And it

40:45

would be, I would love

40:47

to lay claim to that. I'd

40:50

love to be able to say that, but I can't because

40:53

I'd be bullshitting. Well,

40:57

what can I say? Well, you can

40:59

have it. It's yours now. Let's

41:02

try for one more question. Do

41:04

you know what? I'm just gonna say it's

41:07

not mine, it's yours. And that is one

41:09

of the things that really interests me in

41:12

this subjective thing, in this offering

41:14

up narratives and people bringing themselves

41:16

to the narrative. That

41:18

is actually a perfect example of

41:21

what I'm talking about. And

41:24

if I do do anything as

41:26

a filmmaker, it is, I do

41:28

deliberately leave space for that. I

41:31

know it's gonna happen anyway. When I say

41:34

I lean towards subjectivity, that is the

41:36

thing I'm leaning towards, is to do

41:38

with space, to do with leaving imaginative

41:43

or thoughtful areas for someone to

41:45

inhabit. But anyway, sorry,

41:48

what was the last question? Oh, that's great.

41:50

My last question, maybe a smidgen

41:52

off topic, I'm curious about

41:54

now, there's been some distance from

41:56

its release, your previous film, Men. Yeah.

42:00

fan and if I know reaction was mixed I'm wondering

42:02

if enough hot time has passed for you to process

42:04

the reception and how people reacted to that film because

42:06

I know people had very big opinions on it I'm

42:08

curious how you feel about it after some times passed.

42:15

The truth is with

42:17

that is that ever

42:20

since I started working which

42:22

was a book it was

42:24

a novel it wasn't a film called

42:26

The Beach number

42:29

one this difference

42:32

between the intention of something and the way

42:34

it's received was made really clear to me

42:36

because I wrote a book that in my

42:38

mind was various things but

42:40

it was also slightly critical of a

42:42

backpacker scene and then I could see

42:44

it was being treated as a celebration

42:46

and that was

42:48

made very clear to me very

42:51

early but the other thing that

42:53

was made clear to me was

42:56

before writing it I

42:58

would have anticipated something

43:01

like a sense of ownership

43:03

or pride or a

43:06

reward as an internal state from

43:08

having done something like written a

43:10

book that's what I would have

43:13

imagined happened and I

43:15

have a very clear memory of walking

43:17

into a bookshop after it was published

43:19

with the intention of seeing it that's

43:21

why I was going into the bookshop

43:23

and then seeing it in the bookshop

43:25

and expecting something to happen

43:28

where I felt affected in

43:30

some ways I guess I would have guessed I

43:33

imagine I would have guessed pride but

43:37

I felt completely neutral I felt absolutely

43:39

nothing at all I was quite written

43:41

a book that's what I would have

43:43

imagined happened and I have a very

43:46

clear memory of walking into a bookshop

43:48

after it was published with the intention

43:50

of seeing it that's why I was

43:52

going into the bookshop and then seeing

43:54

it in the bookshop and expecting something

43:57

to happen where I

43:59

felt affected in some

44:01

ways, I guess I would have guessed, I

44:04

imagine I would have guessed pride,

44:06

but I felt

44:08

completely neutral, I felt absolutely

44:10

nothing at all, I was

44:12

quite dismayed by it and

44:14

quite surprised actually, and that's

44:16

never left me, I think

44:18

it's a personality quirk, I

44:21

work really hard on something, I really

44:23

care about it while I'm doing it,

44:26

and I

44:28

get obsessive actually, I get very very

44:30

obsessive about the thing while

44:33

I'm doing it, can't really escape from

44:36

it, the moment it walks out into

44:38

the world I feel very divorced from

44:40

it, it could

44:42

easily be made by someone else, so

44:44

when you ask me about men, about how

44:46

I see it now, it fits into that

44:48

category which is the same category

44:50

as all of the other things, they're

44:53

a product of a fixation, I think

44:56

I've been lucky in my

44:58

working life that I've been

45:01

able to not really worry

45:03

about commercial considerations too much,

45:05

and I've been allowed by

45:08

financiers to make some slightly odd

45:10

projects that don't on the face

45:12

of them make sense, so

45:17

I feel very fortunate but

45:20

also quite separate because

45:23

the fever is broken, at the

45:25

point it's done it's like the fever breaks, something like

45:27

that. Well, I'm out of

45:29

time, thank you so much, congratulations on the film and I hope you have

45:31

a rest of the day, it was great. Thank

45:34

you very much, thank you. Alright Bill, that's going to

45:36

do it for today's episode of the show, where can

45:38

people find you and more of your work on the

45:40

internet? I can

45:43

be found on my SlashFilm

45:45

page, BillBria, slashfilm.com slashbillbria, and

45:47

all my socials are at BillBria, so

45:49

check me out on Twitter, I'm not going to say X, Instagram,

45:54

and TikTok. Okay, excellent. SlashFilm

45:56

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