The film will be released in cinemas in the USA on Halloween 2025. The German release follows just a week later, just in time for the first anniversary of Donald Trump's second presidential election victory. And in fact, this ominous combination hits the core of “The Change” frighteningly well: with “Corpus Christi,” in which a petty criminal fake priest brings a breath of fresh air to an outdated community, Jan Komasa was nominated for an Oscar for Best International Film in 2019/20. But now, with his first English-language project, the Polish director is taking exactly the opposite direction.
In “Corpus Christi” everything looked gray at first – and despite the usual setbacks, the sky continued to clear afterwards. Quite ambitious, but still reliable, feel-good cinema. In “The Change” dark clouds appear at the beginning – but not a single one of them disappears in the following two hours. Instead, everything just keeps getting darker. In recent years, in addition to “Feel-Good-Movie” (approx. 2.35 million hits on Google), the often ironically used term “Feel-Bad-Movie” (still 97,500 hits) has also become established. But even if it didn't exist yet, you would have to invent it for “The Change”.
Literature professor Ellen (Diane Lane) and restaurant owner Paul (Kyle Chandler) celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary: the beginning of the end!
The plot extends over a period of five years, but in each of them “The Change” only takes place on a single day – always on the occasion of a family celebration in the parents' house, which at the beginning and at the end celebrate their 25th and 30th wedding anniversaries (hence the original title “Anniversary”): Ellen (Diane Lane) is a successful literature professor who regularly appears as an expert in TV shows where she for example, defending the institution “university” against the common woke accusations. She uses sophisticated eloquence to drive her conservative opponents into the ground. Her husband Paul (Kyle Chandler) runs an upscale restaurant, but also likes to watch his busy wife's back.
The couple has a son and three daughters, of which only the little one, Birdie (Mckenna Grace), lives at home. On their 25th wedding anniversary, son Josh (Dylan O'Brien), a previously unsuccessful poet, brings his new girlfriend Liz (Phoebe Dynevor) to the celebration. But at least his mother already knows the charming young woman: Liz was once her student – and Ellen ensured that she had to leave the university by classifying one of her essays as “fascist”. In the meantime, however, Liz has written a budding bestseller: “The Change” calls for a national grassroots movement and the abolition of parties – a wake-up call that is quickly gaining more and more radical supporters…
Like rats in a cage
There are also individual scenes that are set at the university or in a restaurant, but the vast majority of the film takes place in and around the parents' house. This consistent concentration on one place and only one day per year makes “The Change” seem almost like an experimental test setup – with the property as a kind of human terrarium in which we can observe up close how fascism affects the family. Only through the increasingly uncomfortable interactions with one another can the audience imagine with astonishing precision what exactly is going on out there in society…
… and what has become even worse in the last twelve months: The advance of fascism always follows similar, recognizable patterns – and yet “The Change” largely avoids the accusation of cliché because it only shows most of it indirectly: We sense that Ellen and Paul dare to say less and less in the presence of their increasingly radicalized son – and we know full well that this is the case for all of them Critics of the eponymous movement out there will also apply.
The family celebrations become more and more painful: Liz is definitely not the woman Ellen and Paul wanted as a daughter-in-law for their son Josh.
As the author of “The Change: A New Social Contract,” Liz is obviously modeled on “Atlas Shrugged” author Ayn Rand – and it is a welcome surprise that “The Change,” despite its unquestionably anti-fascist stance, treats her with astonishing ambivalence. With Josh, on the other hand, it is hardly a coincidence that, like Adolf Hitler, he is still gnawing at his past as a failed artist – and is now overcompensating for his rejections with his newfound power. The fact that “Maze Runner” star Dylan O'Brien creates the character as an increasingly full-on psycho regularly raises the tension level at the dinner table to unexpected heights, but it also takes away from the scenario some of its generality.
It's no wonder that Jan Komasa was able to immediately attract such a well-known cast for his US debut: Diane Lane (“Man Of Steel”), Kyle Chandler (“Friday Night Lights”) & Co. will certainly not only have left a lasting impression with his Oscar nomination for “Corpus Christi” – all of them will also have their own potential Oscar moment where he or she can really freak out or collapse in an award-winning way. The times for subtleties and abstractions are obviously over – instead, the impacts are no longer just getting closer and closer, they have already reached the living room at home and feel all the more painful, especially in this familiar and private setting.
Conclusion: “The Change” starts out disturbing – and then only gets more and more uncomfortable. A fascist dystopia that is almost even more painful than “1984”, “Brave New World” & Co. because it all feels so incredibly close – as if it could not only happen in the often-spoken “near future”, but rather tomorrow or next week at the latest.