Jan Komasa’s Anniversary is a curious thing: an overtly political film that’s hesitant to express its own political views. The broad strokes of its story—and even some of the finer ones—are reminiscent of Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale, where an authoritarian regime rose to power in the United States off the back of a controversial book. Where Anniversary differs is that we’re never given any idea as to what exactly a book called The Change advocates for.
Written by Komasa and Lori Rosene-Gambino, the film begins at the 25th wedding anniversary celebration of a restaurateur, Paul (Kyle Chandler), and his liberal arts professor wife, Ellen (Diane Lane). During the party, their son, Josh (Dylan O’Brien), introduces them to his new partner, Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), a former student of Ellen’s who became infamous after delivering a paper arguing against democracy. Liz talks ardently about the book she’s been writing and, from here, the film jumps forward a year at a time to watch as The Change storms the charts and ignites a movement that subsequently reshapes the U.S.
Anniversary tells the story of a nation’s descent into fascism through the lens of one family’s experience, with dinner-table disputes growing into full-blown cultural schisms. There’s novelty in that, but there’s an unintentionally farcical quality to how wrapped up in this one middle-class family the country’s future turns out to be: America’s takeover is led by Liz and Josh, while Ellen and her comedian daughter, Anna (a delightfully spiky Madeline Brewer), quickly become the faces of the rebellion. It’s a real Skywalker situation, with the fate of the world somehow resting on the shoulders of about half a dozen people, most of whom are related.
But the thing that renders Anniversary’s vision of dystopia so implausible and so impossible to invest in is its refusal to give us a sense of what makes The Change so incendiary. All we learn is that Liz’s movement is anti-democratic, and she makes vague mention of the importance of America’s “traditions.” The Handmaid’s Tale’s vision of the future is chilling because it’s rooted in prejudices and social structures that exist now, and it depicts exactly how these forces might be weaponized to convince millions of Americans to willingly surrender their democracy while rolling over those who refuse. Anniversary’s explanation of why the U.S. voluntarily turned itself into a one-party state basically amounts to “some lady wrote a real persuasive book.”
At one point, Anna’s girlfriend, Gemma (Flavia Watson), thanks Liz for writing The Change, swearing that it saved her life and her relationship with her parents. The moment is meant to be subversive, for painting the folks turning the U.S. into a hyper-nationalist police state as LGBTQ-friendly. But it’s really just dubious, detached as it is from any conceivable political reality. There’s simply nothing The Change could contain that would explain a flag-waving, heritage-obsessed, violently fascist movement that’s also super cool with queer people.
Early on in Anniversary, Ellen delivers a lecture in which she diagnoses America’s problems as the result of people being unable “to confront a reality that contradicts their worldview.” That’s a reasonable enough argument, and it stands in perversely stark contrast to the way the film has its characters confront a reality that could never exist because it’s fundamentally incoherent.
Anniversary’s inability to make you think otherwise is what makes it feel so toothless as cultural commentary, lessening its dramatic power. The dystopia it presents feels completely plastic, like a fascism-themed playhouse built specifically to torment one family. Even when Ellen and Paul are being surveilled by drones and interrogated by a Gestapo-like force, it’s impossible to take any character’s plight seriously because their trajectories never feel real.
Just about the only element of the film that does ring true, and hauntingly so, is O’Brien’s performance. We first meet Josh as a frustrated writer and then watch him evolve into a condescending reptile of a man who visibly feeds off the contempt of everyone around him. It’s a skin-crawling portrayal, and one with far too many real-life parallels.
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