Jan Komasa’s Anniversary should be in the running for least-subtle movie of the year. It should also be in the running for most terrifying. This ruthlessly effective thriller rarely beats around the bush with what it’s trying to say, nor does it ask its famous actors to rein in their performances––despite occasionally needing to––but it certainly hits its mark with unnerving accuracy. Watching it at the opening of the Warsaw Film Festival on Friday night (the Polish director’s home turf), I was reminded of Michel Franco’s New Order, a similarly brutal totalitarian nightmare. As well as, better yet, Paul Lynch’s Booker Prize-winning novel Prophet Song: another fable about a nation’s slide into fascism, and another story told from the POV of a disbelieving mother. Anniversary might be overacted and blunt to the point of preaching, but I could never quite work out where it was going, and I was never not locked-in.
Written by Lori Rosene-Gambino, this is a story laced with contemporary anxieties: the kind of movie that seems less concerned with worrying the brain than the lowest pits of the stomach. Since the release of Suicide Room in 2011, Komasa has been building towards this: assembling a catalogue of provocative work without ever quite gaining name recognition. That could be about to change with the dual release of Anniversary and Good Boy this season, the director’s first English-language projects, and the kind of movies that show what an Oscar nomination––which Komasa received for Corpus Cristi in 2019––can do for a filmmaker’s career. Good Boy is currently having to face the misfortune of being released at the same time as Ben Leonberg’s horror movie, but Komasa’s film, which boasts Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough in its cast, has been no less warmly received.
Regardless, Anniversary’s constellation of stars is even more dazzling: Diane Lane and Kyle Chandler play Ellen and Paul, a liberal academic and restaurateur, as well as mom and dad to four kids: McKenna Grace plays Birdie, the youngest of the flock and a girl as watchful and flighty as her name suggests; Zoey Deutch plays Cynthia, an environmental layer who works cases with her hunky husband, Rob (Daryl McCormack); Madeline Brewer gets to chew the most scenery as Anna, a viral comic with a reputation for pushing buttons; and, last but not least, Dylan O’Brien as Josh, the least-gifted of the family and one who Phoebe Dynevor’s Liz (a politics major whose once wrote a paper on one-party rule that resulted in Ellen humiliating her in front of the entire class) decides to sink her flawless whites into. The movie begins as the family gathers for Ellen and Paul’s 25th anniversary, and will check back in for a major event, each year or so, until gathering again for their 30th––a period of time in which Liz’s political star will rise as the democratic system around them falls. It would be a shame to give any more away.
The transition to English-language filmmaking can be a tricky beast at the best of times, not least for a filmmaker tackling a story with this much political meat on the bone. On more than one occasion my mind wandered to Joachim Trier’s Louder Than Bombs, a smaller movie in many ways, but one I think most would agree was a low point in his career––a rare misfire between the sad-core Oslo Trilogy and current Renatessance. Released in the final months of the Obama presidency, Bombs attempted to say something about war and masculinity through the disintegration of a family unit, but Trier’s approach was overly melancholy, perhaps well-meaning to a fault. You got the sense of a director walking on eggshells, or in other words, the polar opposite of what Komasa is up to here. If the Norwegian arrived in America with a polite rattle on the door, Anniversary suggests a battering ram.
The most common and most understandable pitfall for any non-native speaker making the switch is getting to know how a good line-reading sounds––a snag that Komasa runs into a few times here. Many of the performers deliver their biggest moments to the rafters, but even amongst those heavy-handed surges is an abundance of quality in the casting. Given the juiciest role she’s had in years, Lane rises to the occasion, while Chandler, in his more coiled moments, reminded me of his exemplary work in The Wolf of Wall Street. Dynevor also excels, never once letting her mask slip; same goes for O’Brien, whose character is basically unrecognizable from beginning to end. And there is just as much to enjoy in the smaller roles––notably Rebecca O’Mara (a Dublin native) and Kaja Chan, who are both deliciously terrifying in a brief scene late on. The camera, which is operated by DP Piotr Sobociński Jr., probably lingers on the actresses a little too often––McKenna Grace in particular, who can’t have been much older than 18 during the shoot––but the direction and storytelling grab you like a page-turner. Whatever those qualms, this is a relentlessly watchable movie: a nasty exploitation flick in prestige clothing.
Anniversary opened the Warsaw Film Festival and arrives in theaters on October 29.
The post Anniversary Review: A Happy Family is Torn Apart in Jan Komasa’s Haunting Drama first appeared on The Film Stage.
