As I left the cinema after seeing Assassination Nation, I remember saying to my fiancé, “They’re going to be talking about that one.” I didn’t just mean because it has a lot of attention grabbing ingredients - an emphasis on social media and technology, a female-led cast, a transgender actress in a lead role - but because this film is clearly setting itself up to be the film of the Instagram generation. Every aspect of it, from the storyline to the directorial style to the constant references to social media, makes it clear to the audience that this film has something to say, and intends to say it in a way that will carve out s place in cinematic history. The question, then, is this: does it succeed?
Let’s start with what works. The cinematography is phenomenal. From the opening sequence to the final frame the camera, the audience and the actors are like partners in an elaborately choreographed dance routine. Every shot feels deliberate, precisely framed; every movement of the camera adds something to the presentation of the film (something desperately lacking in modern mainstream cinema). The dynamism of the camerawork is reminiscent of Spike Lee - not content to ask you to pay attention, this is a film that reaches out, grabs you by the lapels, and shouts in your face, and that approach extends to the colour palette. In a world of teal and orange blandness, director Sam Levinson saturates his film with blood reds and canary yellows that resemble post-Kill Bill Tarantino. The colours and the lighting are bold and, above all, deliberate - one gets the sense that not a single prop came on set without Levinson checking it to make sure it wouldn’t disrupt the colour scheme of the scene.
I could go on for pages about all the little things in the film that I love - the fourth wall breaks, the use of split screens, the characters that, while obnoxious, still somehow get you rooting for them - but that would take too long, and I’m lazy. So instead, I’ll focus on the opening. This is what really set up my expectations for the rest of the film, and it’s almost worth the price of admission on its own. The first scene takes place the morning after the rest of the film, and it’s a fairly standard set up that has the audience wondering what exactly happened. What follows, though, is one of my favourite intros in recent cinema. The main character, in voiceover, gives us a few hints as to what we’re about to see, and then runs through a list of “trigger warnings” for the film - violence, suicide, homophobia, etc. Each warning is accompanied by a short clip demonstrating what we’re being warned about - not long enough to spoil anything, but enough to invalidate the warning and create a feeling of affect overload that functions as a kind of pre-exhaustion, bludgeoning the audience into submission so that we are primed to accept the conceit of the film. We no longer have the energy to disbelieve.
In the hands of lesser filmmakers, this could have been an excuse to mock the idea of trigger warnings in a “look at the millennials” way. Levinson, however, has something else in mind: he’s mocking the people who are offended by the words “trigger warning”, and doing so in a way that signals to the audience that we’re being divided. We’re being sorted into those who are turned on enough to get the film, and those who can’t handle it. This is an attitude that informs the rest of the film, not only in the camerawork (there are a lot of very intrusive, very unconventional shots that might turn off more conservative critics) but in the dialogue. Hari Nef’s tongue-in-cheek references to “LGBTQIAA+ people” are not a jab at the ever-expanding alphabet soup acronym, but a challenge to people who would be turned off the film by any discussion of queer issues. The film is daring you not to get the joke - I’d call it punk, but that word hasn’t meant anything since the eighties.
The film is excellent for the first two thirds or so, and it retains certain qualities even into the disappointing third act. The performances are solid throughout - I can’t think of a single actor who isn’t on form from beginning to end. The script retains its wit, and the acting sequences are tense and well shot, and there are individual scenes that are as good as anything that precedes them. There are problems, though, that prevent the film from delivering on its promise. First, the title has the word “nation” in it twice and that bothers me. Second, there’s that thing that I thought filmmakers had grown out of, where characters’ guns hold a seemingly infinite amount of bullets. But neither of those are major concerns. What is a major concern is the plot. The film pulls off the trick of maintaining its forward momentum right up until the climax, and still somehow screwing it up. The plot careens toward its finale and then...it stops. There’s no resolution, not even a disappointing one - the plot reaches boiling point, and then we cut to the epilogue. Not only that, but we never even find out what happens. The question that the film sets up at the very beginning - what happened that night? - goes unanswered.
Assassination Nation is a frustrating film. It sets itself up as something far bolder and more original than it turns out to be, and what makes it worse is that for a good hour or so it actually seems like it will deliver on that promise. That said, while it falls at the last hurdle, this shattered jewel of a film still gets enough right to be worth the watch. I’ll take it over whatever Benedict Cumberbatch is in this week. 