Anniversary Review: Jan Komasa's Politically Apolitical Film Is A Confounding Nightmare

Jan Komasa pulls off something quite bizarre with Anniversary. A film about the burgeoning of a regressive, fascist country borne from the publishing of a controversial book, the story is crafted in similar fashion to The Handmaid’s Tale, yet curiously devoid of divulging specifics. It is difficult to pinpoint what Komasa’s film is saying at all except, maybe, that political absolutism, regardless of its place on the spectrum, is a dangerous thing. But that’s exceedingly vague, and it keeps Anniversary mired in mediocrity.

Anniversary Is A Frustratingly Non-Specifc Nothing Burger

The book in question is called The Change, and it is written by Elizabeth Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor). A robotic woman with a creepily calculated cadence, her book expounds on her college thesis of the same name, which ambiguously calls for the “birth” of a new nation. Her college thesis was written at Georgetown while studying under Ellen (Diane Lane), who roundly dismissed Nettles’ work as “disturbingly anti-democratic.” Well, the joke’s on Ellen now, because Liz is dating her only son, Josh (Dylan O’Brien).

Josh has brought Liz home for his parents’ 25th anniversary party. Ellen makes broad references to her politics, which do seem pretty broad (her first line in the film is to her class explaining how she is neither “liberal nor conservative“), but her restaurateur husband, Paul (Kyle Chandler), is a perennial peacekeeper – which is to say that he avoids politics at all costs. The two have three daughters they seem to prize well over their only son: Anna (Madeline Brewer), a firebrand and wildly successful stand-up comic; Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), an environmental lawyer battling the fossil fuel industry; and Birdie (Mckenna Grace), a shy high school student with a penchant for the sciences.

Ellen is suspicious of Liz’s intentions, and the family situation only gets significantly worse. Komasa jumps two years to a time in which The Change has sold 10 million copies and become so ubiquitous that adherents to its cause have propped up a new version of the flag, wherein the 50 stars are firmly placed in the center. The rest of the film goes on like this, jumping year to year as a country devolves into fascism. But the turn is incredulous, predicated as it is on the lives of only a handful of people.

But even more frustrating than its impossibly irrational plot is that we are never really made privy to what, exactly, the book argues for other than the vague “dissolution” of the two-party system. The image of the flag that adherents to The Change trot out might indicate a rebuke for radical centrism, but it’s clear that’s not exactly what the target is, either. Some of the language suggests white supremacy, but then Cynthia’s husband, Rob (Daryl McCormack) is Black and firmly welcomed in by Josh and Liz, and images of their followers in later scenes reveal a decently diverse crowd.

Nor is The Change seemingly advocating for religious nationalism. It seems as if the only thing really being argued for is a blind submission to “country over party,” which isn’t great politics by any means but hardly seems all that incendiary, just kind of platitudinous. In the back half of the film, as America becomes more authoritarian, the general population’s access to the internet is restricted, and there is talk of mass surveillance. But, again, we aren’t told who, exactly, is being targeted or restricted.

To be sure, Komasa and co-writer Lori Rosene-Gambino have written some crackling scenes of high tension, and the cast is sublime, even if the characters are drawn haphazardly. Birdie, for example, makes a concertedly leftist attack about the violent colonial history of Thanksgiving, but then backs her mom off from dissuading her against an internship with The Cumberland Company, the shady financial group behind The Change‘s success. Spoiler alert: The Cumberland Company is never explained, either.

Komasa and Rosene-Gambino criticize abject loyalty to the state and caution against empty rhetoric and fearmongering. That’s all well and good, but in a film that purports to be a political statement, you’d think it’d be important to nail down where those dangerous ideals come from. The chamber drama of a rich family in collapse is only successful as much as the context within which it exists, and, because that context is as slippery as it is, Anniversary just feels toothless.