One of the most surprising elements of the Alex Garland movie Civil War is that despite being set in a divided and war-torn America, it’s completely free of a political angle: There’s no mention of Democrats or Republicans, or the issues that brought a fictional United States to this point. And Nick Offerman, who plays the sitting President of this crumbling country, says that this lack of politics is “my absolute favorite thing about this film.”
Offerman tells Consequence that when he first read the script for the powerful alternate reality story, “I called Alex and said, ‘This is amazing — you don’t really know what side this President is on. You never really know what has happened, who did what to whom, how did we get to this place?’ He transcends that conversation, with which we are all so obsessed in this day and age.”
So while the Parks and Recreation and The Last of Us actor admits that “it occurs to me immediately to say, well, I have passionate feelings about modern day politics that I would love to slap the audience across the face with, Alex basically disallows the audience that.”
It’s a choice that has led to some criticism, Offerman says: “It’s funny, a lot of the people reviewing the film are angered by this, where they’re like, ‘I really would like to weigh in with my political views. Like, I feel cheated that I saw this movie, and I don’t get to like be a smarty-pants about how it relates to modern-day politics.”
Yet what he thinks “belies Alex’s great sensitivity, is that that conversation is not doing us any good. What he is addressing is that absolute divisiveness. And if I think that if the film had political specificity, it would be a failure. One side or the other would get mad and say, ‘This is propaganda for him or for him or for her.’ And instead the movie disallows that, and if you’re able to silence the pundits in your head, and take it in as a work of art, then you receive it just as a citizen of humanity, and not of any political faction.”
Offerman attributes this to Garland having “a great novelist’s heart. Because it’s incredible that he resisted the temptation to weigh in not just on American politics, but what’s happening all over the world. You know, fascism is knocking on a lot of doors and, and this says, ‘Hey, all of us, we should maybe have a look at this. We should maybe consider a change of tack.’”
While Offerman’s presence on the film is limited, Garland had a moment of on-set inspiration that led to him getting a little extra screen time, as he explains below. He also details why he’s proud to be a part of Garland’s “repertory company,” how many days he was on set, and why, when a script is good, he finds questions about an actor’s craft to be “boring.”
