“She also has her own internal civil war”: how the character of Civil War was conceived

Alex Garland and Kirsten Dunst talk about the film's DVD, Blu-Ray and digital release.

It's now been three months since Civil War was released in theaters, breaking recordsAlex Garland which thus marks the biggest success of his career with 65 million dollars at the global box office and more than 600,000 admissions in France.

The film follows four journalists in road trip to conquer the subject of the century: an interview with the American President while the country is being torn apart by a civil war. On the road, ethical battles, moral dilemmas and unspeakable violence await them.

Today, as the film is released on DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States (you'll have to wait a little longer to find it on shelves in France), A24 is unveiling a bonus feature in which the director and his actress, Kirsten Dunstlook back at how Lee's character, a seasoned and tough female war photographer, came to life.

For Alex Garland, Lee's character is much more complex than one might think:

“Lee has spent her professional life covering war in other countries and is now covering a war in her own country. It’s a kind of twin civil war that’s at play: there’s the broader backdrop of the civil war she’s covering, but she also has her own internal civil war.”

This gives a character who seems hermetic, almost insensitive, who seems to fear nothing and no one. Kirsten Dunst details her vision of things:

“I think when you're a war photojournalist, that's your job. Fear is not part of her job, and she just does her job. No matter what, she's willing to risk her life.”

However, Lee has a flaw, which she doesn't want at first: it's Jessie, a young photographer, who aspires to learn the ropes and all the tricks of the trade. Lee and Jessie advance in parallel, like two sides of the same coin.

“I told it to Cailee [Spaeny] When we first worked together, because we shot the sequences in the order of the film, I said to him: 'What if I were your long-lost mother, and you were my long-lost daughter? We'll play the scene, but that's what's underneath'. In that way, there's a real soul connection that happens while we're saying other things. That's kind of what we did, because she's a reflection of Lee, a reflection of who she was before, a young photographer wanting to prove herself.”

A point of view shared by Cailee Spaeny who, at the time of the film's release, told First :

“With Kirsten [Dunst] who embodies my role model in the film, we drew a parallel between our characters and our relationship to the film industry, a world based precisely on the gaze and the image. I am the youngest who looks at her elder and seeks to learn from her…”

“It was never seen before”: Civil War actors open up about the making-of