A seemingly happy family collapses under physical and psychological strains as a political movement sweeps the country. The film is well acted, but there’s heavy drinking and drug use on display. The language is extremely foul. And the movie ends with political violence, terrorist destruction and an up-close, bloody murder.
They’ve been together for 25 wonderful years. And even with two demanding careers, the Taylors—Ellen, a respected political science professor at Georgetown University, and Paul, the successful owner of a five-star restaurant—have kept their love strong and raised their family well.
They’re simply doing great.
In fact, nearly all of Ellen and Paul’s kids have staked out their own successes as well.
The cynical and fiercely independent Cynthia, for instance, is an upwardly mobile environmental lawyer who works well with fellow litigator/husband, Rob. Daughter No. 2, Anna, couldn’t be more unlike Cynthia, but she’s equally prosperous in her own quick-witted, gay, stage-comic way. Youngest daughter, Birdie, is a teen and still living at home. But even she has hit her stride with a brilliant, if quiet, passion for science.
The Taylor’s son, Josh, is the only one who hasn’t fared so well in the world-conquering department. He has some writing chops—at least in Ellen’s opinion—but he’s never really been able to finish anything he started.
However, on the occasion of Ellen and Paul’s 25th anniversary party, it’s Josh who grabs the most attention. The awkwardly timid guy shows up with his love interest, Liz. And with repeated public hugs, caresses and kisses, they make it clear that things are pretty serious between them. Oh, and Josh has been helping Liz finetune a ground-breaking project: They call it a “self-organizing guide.” “A way of seeing our world through a fresh prism,” Liz declares.
Ellen is superficially enthusiastic over the news, at least for Josh’s sake. But there’s something about the somewhat severe, icy-eyed Liz, with her not-quite smile, that just doesn’t sit well with Ellen. Then it hits her: Liz used to be her student. Elizabeth Nettles was a problem. This young woman pushed outlandish, anti-democratic sentiments in class. In fact, Ellen found Liz’s political philosophies disturbing in the extreme.
Ellen was also instrumental in having Liz ostracized, in a sense, from Georgetown altogether. And now here Liz is, back and latched onto Josh. This isn’t good.
When Josh and Liz are on their way out, though, they present Ellen and Paul with a copy of the already published project they referenced earlier—a thick tome titled The Change: The New Social Contract.
Ellen later looks through the book and snorts in derision. It’s the same sort of no-party-system political tripe that Liz had once pushed in class. It’s all a load of populist nonsense, of course. The sort of stuff that would lead to fascism and totalitarian anarchy, in Ellen’s opinion. Thank goodness this garbage will never sell.
By the time the kids all return to celebrate Thanksgiving, Josh and Liz are married. And pregnant. Oh, and their book is selling like hot cakes. Backed by a massive corporate entity called the Cumberland Company, The Change is becoming something of a cultural phenomenon.
Between the Thanksgiving platter passing and the Taylors’ typical family discussions of the American colonizers who ravaged indigenous people, Ellen is able to twitchingly shrug off the buzz at the university, the new flags the neighbors are hanging and all she’s hearing in the news. But things are changing.
There are slight but obvious cracks in their family as well: unexpected worries and frustrations, new arguments between the siblings. Josh is, in essence, proselytizing Rob to join “the movement.” In fact, like it or not, the whole country seems about ready to split wide open; populist drivel drowning out good liberal sense.
But despite all that, the Taylors are doing great.
They are.
Right?
During their 25th anniversary celebration, Ellen and Paul each give small personal speeches proclaiming their love for each other. “My greatest happiness in life is being Paul’s wife,” Ellen declares. In turn, Paul talks of how they met in an art museum in front of the René Magritte painting The Lovers—a surrealist depiction of two figures kissing with white cloths obscuring their faces.
And indeed, the handsome Taylors do appear happy and sincere when we first meet them—Ellen the intelligent leader, Paul the food-loving peacemaker. As time passes, though (the film covers the course of five years), their loving glow becomes strained. However, the couple sticks with each other even in the worst moments (including a symbolic instance when they’re seated next to each other with hoods over their heads, reflecting Magritte’s painting of love).
Anna is openly crass and crude, but she and young Birdie have a gentle and loving sisterly connection.
For all of the ways that The Change disturbs and angers some (particularly Ellen), there are some who find the book uplifting and positive. “I didn’t speak to my parents for 12 years,” Anna’s assistant proclaims when discovering that Liz is the author. “And then I read your book. Saved my life.”
Anna notes that Liz has a “Seventh-Day-Adventist vibe.” She also jokes that her assistant used to be a recruiter for a religious cult.
Anna is gay, and she makes comments about having sex with her female assistants. Ellen and Paul kiss repeatedly. And Cynthia and Rob sit in bed listening to her parents make love in an upstairs bedroom. (Cynthia is dressed in silky shorts and tank top sleepwear.) Birdie kisses her boyfriend from school.
A pair of women strip off their clothes at night and jump naked into a lake (seen indistinctly from a distance).
Ellen talks about the violence that The Change has wrought. We’re not told much about the movement other than it’s populist driven and supported by a corporate entity. The growing philosophy gives rise to a police state. We see the emotional strains that the police state causes as officers grab people at gunpoint and flying drones patrol the neighborhood streets at night.
Ellen and other opposers of The Change lash out in violent, angry ways. People tear down signs and flags. They destroy property. And the violence escalates as general sanity crumbles.
Someone runs from police and is gunned down. Another individual is stabbed by a loved one and falls to bleed profusely on the floor. The attacker then carries the bloody weapon into the streets, and police shoot her. We see a terrorist walk into a large corporate lobby and detonate explosives she’s wearing, killing scores of people and spreading a biological pathogen. News reports show buildings burning.
Cynthia repeatedly declares her lack of desire to have a child. But when she becomes pregnant, Rob joyously announces the news to the family. Privately Cynthia tells Rob she had an abortion. Rob believes this was a selfish choice made without him, so he angrily screams and weeps. “That was my life, too,” he yells.
About 55 f-words and 10 s-words litter the dialogue, along with several uses of the word “h—.” And there are 17 misuses of God and Jesus’ names (God being paired with “d–n” in two of those cases). Crude references are made to male genitalia and oral sex.
Anna smokes on occasion. And as family and world political tensions become stressful, Ellen begins smoking, too. Later in the story, we see that Ellen’s habit has grown to extremes, her ashtray brimming with cigarette butts.
Paul tells his wife that “the kids found our weed stash.” It’s obvious that he’s been using the drug as well. We see the siblings all smoking the marijuana and laughing after the anniversary party. And they force Liz to join in.
The whole Taylor family tends to drink wine and alcoholic beverages heavily with their meals and celebrations (except for Liz when she’s pregnant).
It comes out that Cynthia is abusing sleeping pills and several people warn her about the addictive and problematic effects of the drugs. Later, when she falls into a deep depression, we see her popping some prescription drugs and wandering around in a bleary-eyed haze. She injures a loved one while under the drug’s numbing influence.
The members of the community around the Taylors’ home begin putting up signs and hanging an altered American flag to indicate their commitment to The Change’s political philosophy. Some people begin pulling down the flags and signs. And an enraged Ellen is filmed angrily yelling and tearing at a neighbor’s flag. That viral recording causes her to lose her position at the university.
With time, the government institutes a special individual-tracking census. Census takers grill the Taylors over the whereabouts of one of their “subversive” daughters. They then threaten Birdie to get the information they want. During an angry family interaction, it appears that Liz’s water breaks. But a doctor later declares it was the result of a hysterical bladder.
A Taylor family member declares that “acts of violence have erupted all over the country” thanks to The Change’s political philosophy. Ellen’s entire personality changes because of those effects. She drinks heavily and cries out that she’s on a watchlist. Birdie quietly becomes angry and radically minded as well.
As The Change takes hold across the country, we’re told that “hundreds of thousands of journalists, scientists, academics, intellectuals and artists flee the country.”
Liz says her parent’s nasty divorce shaped her as a child.
At the beginning of Anniversary, Ellen Taylor stands before her Georgetown University classroom to challenge students in their political thinking.
The moralizing professor notes that Anton Chekhov once “wrote about the human condition: the absurdity of it, the pain that arises when people who have clung to their habits and their delusions are forced to confront a reality that contradicts their worldview.”
Writer/director Jan Komasa uses that short scene to establish his film’s focus: a warning about the dire changes that he believes may be sweeping through America’s uneducated populist masses.
Then we watch as Ellen’s liberal family—the Hollywood-perfect symbol of all that is good in the American ethos—is infected and consumed by a growing fascist, totalitarian mindset. And in the end, that family ideal (and symbolically, America itself) is left crushed and bloody.
This political fever dream of a film is far from subtle, and it expresses its maker’s angst in sinister tones. Between the movie’s foul language, drug abuse, scenes of emotional anguish and closing bloody extremes it won’t be an easy watch for any but those who enjoy the catharsis of shaking an angry fist.
After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.
