The Oscar nominee has an enviable list of hits to his name, from 28 Days Later to Ex Machina. So why has making a thriller about a divided America pushed him to quit the director’s chair?
Alex Garland smiles broadly only once while in my company, and it’s when I’m about to leave. As I put on my coat and say goodbye, an irrepressible and unmistakable grin of relief spreads across the film-maker’s face. I don’t take it personally – and Garland is unfailingly courteous throughout our conversation – but this seems indicative of both his serious character in general, and his uneasy mood at present. I wonder if it is partly due to filmgoers like me, with our insistent (mis)interpretation of his work, that Garland says that his latest film will also be the last he directs.
And what a way to go out. With a rumoured $50m budget, Civil War is the most expensive film ever made by indie production house A24, and on an epic scale that surpasses Garland’s previous, also ambitious, films. Plus, if you thought the gender politics of his 2022 folk horror Men were confrontational, or that the ambiguity of 2018 sci-fi thriller Annihilation was courageous, or the take-down of tech billionaires in 2015’s Ex-Machina provocative … Well then, try putting out a US-set action thriller called Civil War in a presidential election year.
