"Weirdly implausible for a film about a modern American family being torn apart by a fast-moving fascistic movement (a movement that's led by one of their own members!), Jan Komasa's " Anniversary " has precious little interest in politics. On the contrary, this sober exercise in "you are here" terror is much less interested in left or right than it is in the base appetites of power. Insecurity. Resentment. Belonging."
"In "Anniversary," one serves as a microcosm for the other, a conflation that's made a little easier to recognize - and a whole lot harder to believe - by the film's abject refusal to engage with specifics. By the parable-like broadness of its belief that love is the only thing lucid enough to see through an Orwellian assault on reality."
Anniversary centers on a modern American family torn apart by a fast-moving fascistic movement led by one of their own. The narrative focuses less on left-right politics than on base appetites of power: insecurity, resentment, and belonging. Love is presented as the only clear-eyed force capable of seeing through an Orwellian assault on reality. Performances, including Diane Lane as Ellen Taylor, are taut and convincing, while the film's parable-like broadness and refusal to engage with specifics make its depiction of corporate authoritarianism feel streamlined and emotionally hollow. The result reads as both timely and absurd.
Read at IndieWire
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