Tag: alex garland

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A still from Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza's "Warfare" (2025), as reviewed by Ezekiel Yu, depicting American soldiers in Iraq shouting, laughing, and celebrating in a small room.

Collapse: on Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza’s “Warfare” (2025)

Though Warfare is certainly one of the most visceral films of the year, there is also a curious distance to it; this has partly to do with the all-encompassing generalization of the title. It’s not named after the squad(s) of Navy SEALs involved, nor “The Battle of Ramadi” (the 2006 Iraq War conflict on which the action is based), nor any other event-specific element the salience of which would have worked perfectly fine as title—it’s simply “warfare.” This is what happens in war, the choice seems to say. Swap these young American soldiers for WWII paratroopers or Napoleonic cavalrymen, or Zulu warriors, for that matter: at the end of the day, they can be substituted for any number of able-bodied youths who are sent off somewhere to fight together and kill and, likely, die.

Yet, at the same time, there are things about this particular episode of bloodletting that are inextricable from its period in history. These are American Special Forces, and the writer-director team of Alex Garland and Ray Mendoza (a former SEAL whose firsthand account of Ramadi serves as the basis of Warfare’s narrative) do not skimp on the accuracy of militaristic procedure: their script is almost entirely jargon, though judiciously peppered with boyish camaraderie and moments of unfiltered human horror. Even a naïve viewer can see that the attention to detail is unique, and the film certainly takes its time walking the viewer through the almost bureaucratic process of holding down a defensive position, under enemy fire, whilst requesting extraction after your position has been exposed. […]

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized shot of actor Jesse Plemons wearing fatigues, red sunglasses, and a rifle in Alex Garland's "Civil War".

America Falls Flat: on Alex Garland’s “Civil War” (2024)

Alex Garland’s Civil War has already generated a decent amount of controversy not long into its US release—at least as much as its producers surely intended it to. It is an election year, after all, and with a not unsignificant number of Americans worried about the possibility of there being another civil war on the horizon, it is no wonder A24 would support Garland (the two having previously partnered on his 2022 gender-parable Men) to draw audiences whose grimmer curiosities might be piqued by an English auteur’s take on American self-evisceration, ideological or otherwise. Much of this controversy stems from dissenters’ claims that showing such a film now would be to irresponsibly stoke either viewers’ anxieties or their potential aggressions.

The film, however, for all its purported untimeliness, is too evasive, too pointedly nonpartisan, for these concerns to hold water. The title will likely evoke, for its US audiences, the war between the Union and the Confederacy in the 1860s, but its usage is more about the concept as such than about any particular instantiation. Garland, in simply transplanting the scenes that have played out and are still playing out in stages all across the developing world to the streets of New York City and Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C., seeks to explode any remaining “It Can’t Happen Here” sentiments without committing himself to any specific political stance. Not any, at least, stronger than a traditional, almost nostalgic, belief in the need for our institutions (government, economic structures, the media, etc.) to be safeguarded from the ravages of internecine conflict. […]