Same Time, Next Dystopia

My thoughts on Anniversary and Ballad of a Small Player

The first extended sequence of Jan Komasa’s Anniversary takes place at the 25th anniversary celebration of Paul (Kyle Chandler) and his wife, Ellen (Diane Lane), a liberal arts professor at Georgetown that is attended by their four children—outspoken comedian Anna (Madeline Brewer), lawyer Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), budding scientist Birdie (McKenna Grace) and would-be author Josh (Dylan O’Brien). As it happens, Josh has brought his new girlfriend, Liz (Phoebe Dynevor), who Ellen soon recognizes as a student from a few years earlier who submitted a thesis essentially arguing for the replacement of democracy with a one-party system that she demolished as essentially endorsing fascism. As it turns out, Liz has transformed that thesis into a book called The Change that is about to be published under the aegis of a shadowy conservative group. When the story picks up a year later, Liz’s book has become a massive best-seller as a movement to adopt its ideas sweeps the country, much to Ellen’s horror. As the film goes on, it continues to jump forward a year or so to show the country slipping further into fascism and the effect that it has on this family, from Anna’s mysterious disappearance following a stand-up bit that went wrong to the destruction of Cynthia’s marriage to fellow lawyer (Daryl MacCormack) to Josh’s shedding of his generally liberal upbringing, where he always seemed to come up short compared to his more accomplished parents and siblings, to fully and frighteningly embrace the new regime and its methods of putting people like his own family in their place for good.

The strange thing about Anniversary is that even though it sounds like it was conceived and produced in a Roger Corman-style rush to capitalize on the current political situation, it turns out that the film was actually shot two years ago. However, what the movie has in prescience, it lacks in plausibility and subtlety. The screenplay by Lori Rosene-Gambino is clearly aching to come across as a contemporary equivalent to The Designated Mourner, Wallace Shawn’s powerful and piercing 1996 drama chronicling an unnamed country’s slide into fascism entirely through the recollections of three intellectuals whose lives are upended in various ways. What made that play such chilling was the quietly offhand way in which Shawn presented his depiction of that kind of political upheaval—the central narrator delivers his testimonies in such a glib and cheerful manner that it took a while to realize that he was in fact embracing this new regime and its cruelties for the pettiest of reasons. (Mike Nichols played the part in the original theatrical run and in a 1997 filmed version and it remains one of the most stunning performances I’ve ever seen.) Here, the film delivers every one of its political points with such sledgehammer force that it starts to make Fifties-era anti-communist propaganda films like Invasion U.S.A. and Red Nightmare seem oblique by comparison and the ways in which the ultimate fate of the country is entwined with the dynamics of this one particular family get kind of silly, especially once it lurches into the over-the-top final act. Also lessening the impact is the fact that the film never quite gets around to explaining what The Change actually consists of and why it would strike such a chord across the country in such a short period of time—the lack of any real specificity renders much of the tension and drama moot and makes it hard to take it seriously as the chilling warning that Komasa clearly intends it to be. It is a shame because the cast is pretty strong for the most part—Lane tears into what is easily her strongest role in a long time and O’Brien’s wholehearted embrace of his new ideology is chilling to watch—and there are a few individual scenes that do work. For the most part, however, Anniversary is a toothless and cluttered mess (there are too many characters on hand, with the ones played by Deutch and MaCormack being the most overtly expendable) that puts so much effort into being timely and provocative that it ends up forgetting to be interesting and entertaining as well

.Ballad of a Small Player, the latest from director Edward Berger (whose previous projects have included the absurdly overpraised remake of All Quiet on the Western Front and the absurdly overpraised papal melodrama Conclave, opens in a trashed luxury suite in a Macao casino currently being occupied by a slick gambler known as Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell) and while he may have had enough luck/skill to secure those digs, it hasn’t clearly hasn’t lasted. Now he spends his time ducking hotel officials looking to settle his astronomical bill and an investigator (Tilda Swinton) trying to track down the fortune that he allegedly embezzled from one of his financial planning clients while trying to find a casino or a benefactor who will extend him enough credit to offer him the chance of a lifeline to somehow pull himself out of his predicament by winning big at baccarat, a fast-paced game that finds players relying almost entirely on luck rather than skill in order to win. Improbably, just such a lifeline seems to appear in the form of lovely and mysterious loan shark Dao Ming (Fala Chen), who is initially hesitant to loan him any money—a previous “client” of hers has just followed a big loss with a big jump off of a roof—but who takes him in at a particularly low point in his existence, though she never quite articulates her reasons for this.

Although I haven’t been much of a fan of Berger’s past work, I admit that the opening scenes did sort of hook me in—while there is nothing particularly original about screenwriter Rowan Joffre’s adaptation of Lawrence Osborne’s novel, Berger is able to present it in a slick, fast-paced manner that is aided immeasurably by Farrell’s strong work as the increasingly dissolute gambler who is not nearly as stylish and charismatic as he thinks he is. The trouble is that after the basic premise is set up, Doyle running around trying to stay one step ahead of his predicament like the guy on Ed Sullivan who used to keep the plates spinning, it quickly becomes repetitive to the point of tedium, its attempts to juice things up—Swinton’s character is so patently unbelievable that not even she can make anything of it and Dao Ming is such a thinly drawn character that nothing involving her rings true—never really working before arriving at an inevitable redemptive conclusion for Lord Doyle that neither the character nor the film have truly earned. With Ballad of a Small Player, Berger is clearly trying to present viewers with a depiction of addiction that will put them in the mind of the likes of Leaving Las Vegas but only manages to come up with this generation’s Fever Pitch.