Anniversary
Wanna join the *new world*?
Jan Komasa, one of the most promising Polish directors and an Academy Award nominee for Corpus Christi, is known for his bold approach and sharp take on social issues. This time, he makes his Hollywood debut with a psychological political drama that premiered at the Warsaw Film Festival.
The film tells the story of Ellen, a university professor often accused of being too liberal in her work. Together with her husband, she seems to have built the perfect life — wealthy, successful children, an enviable career, and all the privileges one could imagine. But when their son Josh brings home his new girlfriend, Liz, the world around the family begins to change rapidly. She recognizes Liz as a former student who once presented an extremely radical thesis that Ellen firmly rejected. Liz left the university soon after and, years later, turned that same idea into a book supported by a major American right-wing corporation — the very foundation of a “New America”, an autocratic, one-party system.
As the story unfolds, Ellen realizes that Liz’s presence in her family is far from accidental — it’s a quiet, parasitic invasion. And if it sounds like The Handmaid’s Tale to you, you’re absolutely right, because in the most basic sense, it is. Change the names of the “power couple” to Serena Joy and Fred Waterford, and you get almost the same story — a so-called prequel to the TV show that once started as something truly great. But is it a good prequel? Not really.
Despite its premise and the evident ambition behind it, Komasa’s film suffers from trying to be about everything at once. It presents itself as a sharp political statement — a reflection on propaganda, power, and the parasitic nature of radical ideologies — yet fails to take a clear stance. Everyone is radicalized, everyone is corrupted, and there’s no space left for nuance or humanity. In Komasa’s world, you can be only extremely right or extremely left — nothing in between. The result is a film that ends up saying nothing concrete.
That becomes the main problem of Anniversary. It tries to say something about the world, about family, and how they dissociate in the modern reality. But eventually, the film turns into an empty shell that tells you to “be brave, fight, but you’ll lose anyway, xoxo”. So what’s the point?
That doesn’t mean the movie is completely bad. There are strong scenes and well-executed moments — for example, the Thanksgiving dinner sequence, which in tone and intensity feels like one of those iconic Gossip Girl Thanksgiving episodes. But overall, Anniversary wants to teach you something without having anything real to say. It falls into the same trap Ari Aster did with Eddington — when a director thinks he’s smarter than the audience and ends up making a film that’s too self-important and out of touch. Especially when compared to Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which managed to speak about similar themes much more clearly and meaningfully.
The cast Komasa gathered is impressive: Diane Lane, Kyle Chandler, Zoey Deutch, McKenna Grace, and Dylan O'Brien — who replaced Jacob Elordi after he dropped out a month before filming. Madeline Brewer, known from The Handmaid’s Tale, probably experienced a few déjà vu moments during production. Everyone does their job absolutely fine, even if Phoebe Dynevor occasionally looks a bit off — though that’s more a problem of the script and direction than her acting.
In the end, Anniversary turns out to be a very safe and slightly tone-deaf political thriller-drama about how everything around us is broken and probably won’t get any better. Feeling good?
5/10
