A blunt, gut-twisting work of speculative fiction, “Civil War” opens with the United States at war with itself — literally, not just rhetorically. As in what if the visions of some rioters had been realized, what if the nation was again broken by Civil War, what if the democratic experiment called America had come undone? In “Civil War,” the British filmmaker Alex Garland explores the unbearable if not the unthinkable, something he likes to do. By the time “Civil War” opens, the fight has been raging for an undisclosed period yet long enough to have hollowed out cities and people’s faces alike. Instead, he presents an outwardly and largely post-ideological landscape in which debates over policies, politics and American exceptionalism have been rendered moot by war.

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Persons: ”, it’s mesmerizingly, Kirsten Dunst, Alex Garland, Garland, “, Jesse Plemons, you’ve Organizations: D.C, Western Forces Locations: United States, Washington, New York, Texas, California, America, British