Anniversary: Nothing to Celebrate Here, Folks
By Chris Knight
Rating: D+
Anniversary is a political thriller. No, make that an apolitical thriller. Directed and co-written by Jan Komasa, it’s a hot-button story where all the buttons have gone cold. I’ve been in airport elevators with more pep.
Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler, fine actors both, star as Ellen and Paul Taylor, a university teacher and a restaurateur who carry all the movie-specific signs of left-leaning liberals. (Bonus point to Komasa and his co-writer, Lori Rosene-Gambino, for NOT giving them a Volvo.)
Daughters Anna (Madeline Brewer), Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), and the winsomely named Birdie (Mckenna Grace) are all cut from similar cloth. But every Democrat family needs its Alex P. Keaton. That would be Josh (Dylan O’Brien), who is dating Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student of Ellen who leans so far right you need that extra-wide movie screen just to see her.
Liz writes a book that elicits some sort of change in the U.S. political spectrum. It’s even called The Change, subtitled The New Social Contract. (Any Rousseau fans in the house?) It’s vaguely threatening, vaguely Republican without naming any parties, vaguely xenophobic, and vaguely — well, vague.
Adherents adopt a new flag, with the stars in the middle rather than in the top corner, and take to hanging it vertically, in a way that looks a little fascist.
This is no doubt what the film is going for. It hints at Nazi Germany with varying degrees of subtlety (Lane’s character calls her son’s German nanny Eva Braun) while also making it clear that this is all happening in a future so near you could make a reservation to eat there.
I’m of the opinion that the new American Reich is too weird to fictionalize or even satirize in real time, although Alex Garland took a good stab at it last year with Civil War, a film that owned its oddball choices, including a suddenly valuable Canadian dollar, an alliance between secessionist California and Texas, and a president (Nick Offerman) of no discernible party.
Anniversary, on the other hand, refuses to commit at all. What’s worse, it mistakes its neutrality for nuance, pulling its punches and then applauding itself for its restraint. Characters spout platitudes — often over Thanksgiving dinner, the last battleground of the American nuclear family — but before we can really engage, the scene shifts.
No fewer than four times does the action jump forward a year or two, ellipses that syphon off the elucidation of watching characters evolve in something like real time. Things get worse in these snapshots — one daughter disappears, while another sinks into depression, and a third becomes radicalized — but without an organic sense of why. We’re constantly playing catchup with the plot.
Anniversary feels like it has something to say and is desperate to do so. American critics have been largely positive, but in a way that suggests those reviewers want to think about these issues themselves, rather than having actually enjoyed the movie.
As someone who is neither a political junkie nor a Yankee, watching Anniversary felt like attending someone else’s family reunion — emotional but distant.
Anniversary. Directed by Jan Komasa. Starring Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, and Phoebe Dynevor. In theatres October 29.