Omens: Can an algorithm or an academic study know when a crisis is going to break out? civil war? Is there a «war alarm», a ChatGPT that alerts us to an imminent conflagration?
For the University of Pennsylvania, the answer is yes. «We simulated a Civil War in the US and Minnesota is the exact trigger»he sentenced Claire Finkelstein -director of the university’s Center for Ethics and Rule of Law and national security advisor- in a column for The Guardian. After the crime of Alex Prettiwhich occurred this weekend, the academic warning became a fact: the outbreak has already begun.
Alex Pretti He was 37 years old and was a nurse. His death is the last chapter – so far – of an escalation that began on January 7 with the murder of Renee Nicole Goodalso at the hands of federal forces.
What is seen today in Minneapolis -plainclothes agents, assault rifles and camouflage- the cinema saw it before anyone else.
It is no coincidence: North American cinema was born with The birth of a nation, founding film and about the north american civil war which also glorified Ku Klux Klan. Yes: since its origin, Hollywood has filmed the fracture of the country as a recurring obsession.
As an urgent diagnosis of the political fracture, these four films explore the cracks of a conflict that many fear has already passed from the screen to the streets. And even one of them became the disturbing obsession of Vladimir Putin.
Civil War, a prequel to what is happening in the US?
“My favorite movie.” Those were, almost verbatim, the words of Vladimir Putin. According to a report by The Daily Beastthe Russian leader and his inner circle became obsessed with Alex Garland’s film since its premiere in 2024.
The director of Civil war also the screenwriter of 28 Days Lateranother work that explores anomie and social collapse. Putin, becoming an unexpected fan, would have seen Garland’s film dozens of times. According to rumors, he forced those close to him to see it as a prediction of the inevitable destiny of the United States.
The impact of Civil war It lies precisely in that audacity and cruelty, both visual and imaginary. There is a scene that feels like a live documentary. Actor Jesse Plemons—the same one from Bugonia and who here plays a paramilitary—rifle in hand, asks:
—»What kind of American are you?»
The journalists, scared to death, try to appeal to logic:
—»We are American journalists.»
—»You already told me.»
—We work for Reuters.»
—»Reuters doesn’t sound very American to me… what kind of Americans are they? Central Americans? South Americans?»
«Hong Kong,» one replies. The paramilitary’s response: kill him.
It is clear: anyone who does not fit the mold of the «federal order» is discarded. The map of the fracture that Garland drew is from east to west and not from south to north like the Civil War. Disturbingly similar to the one patrolling the ICE with helmets and gas masks.
The Purge: when the neighbor is the enemy and the State gives you permission
There is a type of cinema like the fast hamburger: greasy, effective and ideal to devour and forget. The saga of The Purge (2013), directed by James DeMonaco, may belong to that category with its uneven sequels, but its original installment still has a wicked charm.
With a Ethan Hawke trapped in his own armored house, it is not common for a mass consumption film to start with the exquisite contrast of the «Moonlight» by Debussy. At the same time, real scenes of shootings, looting and lynchings captured by security cameras parade. An aesthetics of surveillance that would have fascinated the German filmmaker and essayist Harun Farocki.
What the film raises is the terrifying premise that the civil war It may well start with your friends and neighbors. In that fictional universe, the ‘enemy’ can be a minority, of course, but also the one who changed the car for a better one, the one who received the bonus that they denied you or the one who has darker skin tone.
That organized hunt, more than a dystopia—the word, so familiar, is beginning to tire—is what they denounce today in Minnesota. ICE agents and Federal DHS forces get out of unlicensed vans, capture protesters without a warrant and use gas in residential areas. As in the film, the State suspended the rights. But not just for 24 hours…
Strange days: the George Floyd that the cinema filmed 30 years ago
Before winning the Oscar for «hunting Bin Laden» in Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow He had already filmed the pocket apocalypse that we see today on social networks. His 1995 film, «Strange Days» captured, three decades earlier, the explosive cocktail that is burning Minnesota today: racism, police brutality, technology in intimate life and a militarized society on the brink of the abyss.
This is essentially the case George Floyd filmed in the last century. But what makes it terrifyingly current is the use of technology. In the film, people are almost addicted to lenses that allow them to experience the experiences (and deaths) of others in first person. Like a current addiction to Instagram feeds where we watch, in a loop, how the police shoot someone down on a corner in Minneapolis.
Violence that is exercised and consumed. The political paranoia and the city under siege that it shows could mirror ICE. In Bigelow’s cinema (Detroitthe recent A house of dynamite) public order is always one step away from becoming tyranny and surveillance
Quit Joker: The Anomie Manifesto
The discussion it generated was such that it ended with double paternity: the left claimed it as a fierce criticism of the failed system. For the right, an involuntary manifesto for «incels» and frustrated whites. In the middle of that tug, the son: a Joaquin Phoenix great that with his Joker He gave substance to social discard.
The work could easily have been called something like “When the system stops giving answers…”. For documentary filmmaker Michael Moore it was, directly, a masterpiece: «the film about the America that Trump gave us,» he declared.
In the end, Todd Phillips, who filmed the adult prank,What happened yesterday?he ended up telling, very seriously, what is going to happen tomorrow.
Reality vs. Fiction: the real-life «Call of Duty»
Has the boundary between fiction and the street been erased? The ICE deployment—those tactical helmets, scary covered faces, movie-like hi-tech camouflage—are already like a civil war set. No special effects: it is the Call of Duty of real life streamed in 4K from an iPhone on any street corner in Minneapolis.
Even the pro-Trump influencer Tim Pool was cutting: «If Trump is trying to stop a civil war, he is failing.» The diagnosis came from its own speakers.
In Civil War there is a scene in which Lee (Kirsten Dunst) takes off her vest for a moment and tries on a dress in a business that functions as a shelter. A moment of normality. As if for a second she, or North America, were trying to recover the life they used to, when the neighbor was not yet a threat.
Some of these films are decades old; others are from yesterday. We can only hope that The alarm that sounds today in Minneapolis is not the trailer for a large-scale conflict. A sequel in real life that, this time, does not have end credits to save us.
