Diane Lane leads a grim portrait of a potential future in the messy yet timely Anniversary.
They say that truth is stranger than fiction, and our current timeline appears hellbent on proving that to be true. Ten months ago, Anniversary could have easily been written off as a heavy-handed political thriller whose vision of an authoritarian United States was so outlandish that it muted the film’s impact. Jan Komasa’s film still struggles with plodding exposition and vague world-building. Its excellent cast, led by Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler, is hindered by a screenplay full of stock characters and a direction that takes big swings at every opportunity.
Despite all these issues, the current political reality of the U.S. makes the film less like a graduate school thought experiment and more like a grim prediction of the future. Anniversary presents America’s slide into fascism through the Taylor family’s own deterioration after a new person joins the family.
The film’s particular blend of political thriller and family drama is too much for Anniversary to tackle in 111 minutes, which means that all the themes that Komasa and screenwriter Lori Rosene-Gambeno confront can only be explored at a surface level.
Grand ambitions.
The structure of the film has us checking in on the marriage anniversary of college professor Ellen and restaurateur Paul Taylor across five years as the country and their family slowly fall apart. The architect of both falls is Liz Nettles (Phoebe Dynevor), the surprise fiancée of their only son, Josh (Dylan O’Brien). The rest of the Taylor children are rounded out by comedian Anna (Madeline Brewer), lawyer Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), and high schooler Birdie (McKenna Grace). Liz, one of Ellen’s former students, shows up with an axe to grind against Ellen and has decided that Josh will be the axe.
Dynevor weaponizes the same doe eyes and naivete that made her shine on Bridgerton, and Liz is an effective enough villain. Unfortunately, she’s not much more than that. Anniversary’s plot moves so quickly that there’s no opportunity to understand what really drives Liz. She clearly has an agenda for the country, but why is she so hell-bent on punishing Ellen? What is the obsession with the Taylor family about?
The same is true for the Taylor family as a whole. The schism in the family happens so quickly that you can’t get a sense of the dynamics in the family beyond the extremely on-the-nose interactions in the opening scenes. Anna likes to push buttons, Cynthia’s marriage is rocky, Josh feels ignored, and Birdie is an impressionable kid.
Anniversary bites off more than it can chew.
Diane Lane is great as Ellen, anchoring the film even as she isn’t able to play with more than simmering anger and righteous indignation. Dylan O’Brien is fantastic as Josh and perfectly captures the type of man whose feelings of inadequacy curdle and turn him into a bully as soon as he gains any amount of power. It’s a fascinating character that remains unexplored as the film speeds through the fall of democracy.
The time-hopping structure of the film doesn’t help. Jumping forward years at a time means that Anniversary skips past any progression of character. The film’s main interest is in capturing only the most significant events of the Taylors’ lives. That makes these moments feel cliché and, in turn, prevents the character from being anything other than well-trodden archetypes. It often feels like Komasa is rushing to check items off a list on his way to the film’s climax.
Every anniversary reveals a new horror for both the Taylors and the country. As one escalation follows another and another and another, the film teeters dangerously close to becoming misery porn with every new misfortune that befalls the Taylor family. In the end, this breakneck speed robs some truly surprising events of their full impact, revealing them at the end of the film.
The bottom line.
Anniversary bites off more than it can chew, but the topics it engages with are so relevant to our current reality that it almost overcomes all stumbles. It presents a version of the U.S. that feels scarily possible, and that alone makes it a powerful piece of art today. The execution holds the film back from truly meeting the current moment and becoming necessary viewing, especially when you could gain much of the same insight just by reading the news.
Anniversary is out now playing in select theaters. Watch the trailer here.
Images courtesy of Lionsgate. Read more articles by Jose Cordova here.
REVIEW RATING
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Anniversary - 6/10
6/10
Jose Cordova is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. A lifelong appreciator of film, television, and video games, he can usually be found sitting on his couch desperately trying to make a dent in his watchlist.
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