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In this sequence from the writer and director Alex Garland’s latest film, “Civil War,” about a modern-day conflict that has broken out in America, journalists making their way to Washington, D.C., stumble across a field set up with Christmas decorations. But the situation couldn’t be less festive. A sniper is set up in a house on a hill above the field. And men in uniform are trying to take the sniper down.
Discussing the scene and its surrealist imagery in his narration, Garland said that in scouting locations, he and his crew came across decorations that were intact more or less as you see them in the film. He said they initially belonged to “a guy who’d put on a winter wonderland festival. People had not dug his winter wonderland festival and he’d gone bankrupt. And he decided just to leave everything just strewn around on a farmer’s field.”
