Kirsten Dunst isn’t making any promises on her Civil War press tour
Alex Garland's contentious A24 film premieres April 12 in theaters
Aux News Kirsten Dunst
Over the past few months, we’ve gotten a whole 101 course on the wide range of different approaches to the hallowed Press Tour. On one hand, you have Reneé Rapp’s charming “no media training at all” Mean Girls tour, complete with cussing out misogynistic bus drivers and other such antics. Then you have Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell picking up the Jessica Chastain and Oscar Isaac mantle of looking like you really want to kiss on the red carpet, all while maintaining that you somehow actually haven’t. And of course, there’s the Dakota Johnson school of openly despising the movie you’re in whenever anyone asks. The point is, there are a lot of ways to promote a movie. But with Kirsten Dunst’s recent Civil War tour, we’re getting something we haven’t really seen in a while: measured but unapologetic. And it’s working.
Dunst has been around the block more than a few times now. Making her acting debut at age 6, she’s had her fair share of press setbacks—for example, that one time she had to contend with Melancholia director Lars von Trier telling a Cannes audience that the idea of being a Nazi “gave [him] some pleasure” and that he could “understand Hitler.” (Yes, that’s unfortunately real.) Over the years, she’s clearly learned how to step back and trust audiences to decide for themselves—especially concerning a movie as sure to be divisive as Alex Garland’s Civil War.
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean she thinks the movie is bad. Quite the opposite, actually. “This movie, after you see it, you want to talk about it for a while with people. And I think any movie that does that is incredible,” she told Variety in a recent profile.
The film will certainly get people talking. Dunst plays a journalist attempting to document a falling America, as a fascist White House encourages widespread armed violence across the nation. Remind you of anyone in particular? Dunst is letting audiences draw their own conclusions about that as well. “It feels fictitious to me,” she said of Nick Offerman’s presidential role. “I don’t want to compare because that’s the antithesis of the film. It’s just a fascist president. But I didn’t think about Nick’s character being any certain political figure. I just thought this is this president, in this world, who will not abide by the Constitution and democracy.”
Dunst also won’t tell audiences how they should feel after the remarkably intense film, but hasn’t hidden the fact that it sounds like it gave her some pretty intense anxiety. “I was just so shook. I didn’t know what to do with myself,” she told GQ about the experience of watching the film for the first time. “The movie feels very real. It feels like a warning or a fable about what happens when the wrong people are in power.” Separately, she told Marie Claire that filming some of the combat sequences “shook me to my core.” “[I] had PTSD for a good two weeks after. I remember coming home and eating lunch and I felt really empty,” she elaborated.
Does Dunst think the movie is objectively good? That’s not for her to determine. Audiences can decide for themselves when they experience it in theaters starting April 12. She did make one assertion regarding our current political climate to Marie Claire, however, that’s worth reproducing here. “[Trump] can’t win. I honestly feel like… we just need a fresh start. We need a woman,” she said. “All the countries that are led by women do so much better.” Amen, Kirsten.
25 Comments
Let me spoil it for everyone: the moral is that it never mattered what side anyone was on because violence is always wrong and everyone should just hug out their differences.Also, is it not common knowledge by now that Von Trier was making a joke and misjudged his delivery?
“Also, is it not common knowledge by now”They’re not talking about “now”, they’re talking about when he said it.
Was he tho
So are you saying we don’t need this Civil War?
What makes war so civil, anyway?
Man, I sure am tired of all these civil wars.
They at least are more gentlemanly than those uncivil wars.
The titular line
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor, so nope.
I know. It can be hard sometimes to defend von Trier – who is, to be sure, a provocateur – but a poorly-delivered joke about finding out “he was a Nazi” because he had just learned that his actual father was a German (as opposed to the Jewish man he had believed his whole life was his father) is hardly the “pro-Hitler” comment that AVClub seems to want to make it.
“Does Dunst think the movie is objectively good?”No, she doesn’t, because opinions are subjective.Jesus Christ…
Emma Keates is not responsible for Kirsten Dunst until she endorse that idiocy. Dina Boluarte, Giorgia Meloni, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Benazir Bhutto, Isabel Peron, Gloria Arroyo, Corazon Aquino, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Sheikh Hasina, Violeta Chamorro, Megawati Sukarnoputri, Yingluck Shinawatra, Yulia Tymoshenko, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Michelle Bachelet, Angela Merkel, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Julia Gillard, Dilma Rousseff, Park Gyeun-he, Aung San Suu Kyi, Tsai Ing-wen, Teresa May, Jacinda Ardern, Liz Truss. These are the ones at least distinguished enough to be remembered off the top of my head. Yes, even Eugenia Charles who defended the US invasion of Grenada, which Kirsten Dunst thinks was making things better. Do you have to fail an IQ test to write for AVClub.
“All the countries that are led by women do so much better.”Italy has entered the chat. Also, Thatcher-era Britain.
I feel like she’s relying on the evidence that “female-led countries did better with covid” for her contention. While this was true (and I live in one of those, at the time, female-led countries) most were smaller (e.g., New Zealand, Iceland), more progressive (i.e., they actually had female leaders), and with a citizenry demonstrating a greater trust in government (and science).
That said, the evidence suggests that even controlling for these context variables, comparison with matched (male-led) countries did show that number of cases were comparable, but that deaths from covid were lower in female-led countries. The researchers suggest that the difference comes down to policies and compliance.
The US, by comparison, had a moron-in-chief who downplayed the virus, refused to listen to the scientists, argued against all measures meant to attenuate the spread, made insane recommendations, spread misinformation, and lied over and over to a citizenry who increasingly distrusts science and government.
Worth noting that the couple of examples you bring up (i.e., Maggie Thatcher, Georgia Meloni) are *conservative* women. I guess it’s not just “being a woman” that matters, but also not being a Tory douchebag or a fascist.
I sometimes think Thatcher heard the once-popular belief that “If women ruled the world, there would be no more wars”, said to herself, “We’ll see about that!” and then immediately started the Falklands War.
Anything you can do, I can do better (but awful)
Hahaha well we all like a challenge.
Maybe this means that running a country kinda disproves the point that the women/men thing should be our #1 priority.
What women and men DO might be more important…
Remember folks, it’s coooontroversial!(barely audibly, from the back) “How is it controversial exactly?”It’s coooontroversial!
From what I’ve heard it’s controversial because it goes to great lengths to not be political at all
PTSD seems to get thrown around an awful lot these days. It is absolutely a real thing and can be utterly devastating, long-term, to those who suffer from it. “I had PTSD for two weeks” after making this film because “I felt empty inside” is not PTSD.
“I remember coming home and eating lunch and feeling really empty. So I had a second sandwich and that filled me up.”
I was thinking the same thing. I have a friend who was in a coma for months, nearly died about a dozen times in the hospital from asphyxiation, and has spent years rehabilitating… Now, whenever she hears a “Beep” (that sounds like one of the many hospital monitors that surrounded her), she struggles to not breakdown into a crying mess. An extreme case, of course, but that is what PTSD can look like.
I hate that. Same with OCD. “Ah man, I got mud on my shoes, I better wipe it off. Must be my OCD!” Like nope, that isn’t what OCD is.
when the wrong people are in powerSo, just, when any people are in power. Even if the “right people” were in charge at one point, it still has led us to this current situation.