‘There’s Something Weird Happening There’

Civil War director Alex Garland is not retiring from directing movies, and recently clarified recent comments that were interpreted as such. In a new interview, Garland responded to the “general strangeness” that his previous statement brought about, and said he has no intention of quitting directing for good.

Speaking to IndieWire, Garland suggested that there is a current trend for statements to take on an unexpected life of their own, and claimed that is very much the case this time around. He said:

“What I said is I’m going to take a break from directing for the foreseeable future. How that could get extrapolated as what pride I do or do not feel in this movie. I just don’t see the connecting thread. I said I’m going to stop directing for the foreseeable future. Why would a statement like that be taken and picked over or interpreted to that degree? There’s something weird happening there. There’s something strange about that … it’s a general strangeness that exists to do with what form public statements take, how they are used, and how words are interpreted or read.

“Just to go back to the statement, I said: I’m going to take a break from directing or I’m going to stop directing for the foreseeable future. That is such an uncontentious thing to say. I also said what I’m going to do is screenwriting. Screenwriting is filmmaking. You can’t erase screenwriters or DOPs or editors or actors from the process of screenwriting. Filmmaking is not the preserve solely of directors.

“I think there is something weird happening in the world. This is like a grain of sand of that weirdness. But the statement I made is so different from the way it’s been interpreted. That is just odd. And so part of me is just reacting to that.”

Alex Garland is Returning to Writing, but Could be Back Behind the Camera Again

Although Garland does not deny that he does not plan to make any movies in the “foreseeable future,” as he has now made clear, this is not the same as backing out of the industry entirely. As someone who claims to not particularly enjoy interacting, and has no real enjoyment of working as a director, it is not surprising that Garland wants to spend more time writing in the coming years.

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Why Alex Garland’s Civil War Is Bound to Feel All Too Real

Alex Garland’s Civil War is coming this April, is a tale of an America heavily divided, and feels oddly similar to things we’ve seen before.

The original belief that Garland was planning to retire came just prior to the arrival of A24 movie Civil War in theaters. This caused quite a stir when Garland’s note that he had “fallen out of love” with filmmaking was added in, and was interpreted by some to mean that he did not have any strong feelings for his new movie. Despite this, the first reviews of Civil War suggested that the dystopian drama, which stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny and Nick Offerman among others, is nothing short of a great achievement and one that Garland should be proud of – and it seems he is. The movie currently holds a 92% Rotten Tomatoes score from critics, and 79% from early audiences.