Even
if privacy really is dead, do we really have to chuck away personal responsibility
with it? This film seems to think so. Set in a modern-day town named Salem, it
becomes the sight of a new kind of witch hunt when nearly every resident has their
dirty, hypocritical social media hacked. Right, subtlety is obviously long gone
as well. Anger is the prime motivation and defining emotion of Sam Levinson’s Assassination Nation (trailer here), which opens
tomorrow in New York.
Lily
Colman and her BFFs Sarah, Em, and the transgender Bex do not believe in
privacy, so they just try to look their best half-naked on social media
platforms. In fact, they devote quite a bit of time to maintaining their
images. Yet, they are still blindsided when the mother of all e-mail/social
media/phone hacks hits Salem. First it is the mayor and then the high school
principal who fall victim to the Savonarola-like hacker, but he soon turns his
attention on the students.
Even
though Colman and her pals are hit harder than anyone by the hack, the town
soon gets the notion that she must be the hacker, so just about everyone forms
into a lynch mob and heads towards her house. Seriously, Colman may have her
flaws, but she hardly seems to have the technical wherewithal for this kind of
cyber mischief. However, she can handle a gun and will do so to defend herself,
as is her right.
Aside
from its huge logical issues, ANation also
suffers from the hypocrisies it so easily ascribes to others. In its world, any
Evangelical Christian is secretly picking up rent boys on the side. Frankly, this
film is symptomatic of the divisiveness plaguing our country. If Levinson actually
went out into Red States to meet Evangelicals they would find most of them love
their children and worry about their online exposure (by the way, Trump
slightly under-performed with this demographic and they turned against Roy Moore).
Whereas, in ANation, there is less
parenting going on than in a typical John Hughes movie.
Most
of the cast is playing broadly drawn “us” or “them” characters, but Colman
Domingo is quite exceptional as Principal Turrell. He stands out as the voice
of reason and a figure of dignity. Frankly, his example serves as an indictment
of both our current polarized society and the film it appears in.
