content warning: death by suicide, gore, nudity, violence against women, sexual content, drug use

In the near future, privacy no longer exists. Everyone’s memories are public record as every detail of a life is accessible like a computer. Police can play back footage to see what really happened at a crime scene. A person convinced of her partner’s infidelity can request access to whatever her partner was thinking about. The system works fine unless people learn how to live outside the system. One woman has learned how to hack herself out of existence as soon as she is seen, making her an unstoppable assassin incapable of being remembered.

Anon has a very stark black and white aesthetic. It’s as desaturated as it can be without being totally devoid of color. The few pops of color draw the eye to small accents in the aesthetic. They push the narrative of a connected world. You’re watching the last moments of a person’s life as told through their memories and you’re drawn to a small stack of oranges or a particularly blue building in the distance. Conversely, the investigators discuss a murder case while your eye is drawn to the entry wound on the victim, the only color in a world where everything is expected to be found out in perfect detail. The vagueness of memory cannot cloud judgment when you can play back the literal events to know what happened from the perspective of anyone who witnessed the event. None of us can be alone when all of us finally freely share all information, thoughts, and feelings we’ve ever experienced.

The style is key to the narrative. The eye is inundated with bright white pop-up data about everything going on. The beauty of the natural world and man-made world is constantly overridden by more detail than you could ever want or need about life. It’s not an on/off switch or an opt in system; you see everything. It’s a subtle dystopia, a vision of a world that pushes you from discomfort to terror. It’s the kind of interface we’ve seen for decades in science fiction on interactive screens; the difference here is the screen is the mind’s eye.

Even in an inventive science fiction world, it’s disappointing that characters are only allowed to be represented onscreen by cinematic stereotypes. The maid at the hotel is a Black woman. The housekeeper at a mansion is a Hispanic woman who does not speak English. People of color exist in the world, but are mostly background ensemble, the unfulfilled promise of a diverse world in this future city. This kind of casting is so easy to avoid, but there exists a series of pervasive, implicit biases in casting that keep repeating over and over unless there is a conscious effort to counteract them in the room while auditioning.

It’s a shame because the bones of the film are good. Writer/director Andrew Niccol has spent a career developing science fiction stories. His most acclaimed work is writing The Truman Show, though S1mone, In Time, and Lord of War all show signs of great world building. His focus is guilt and suffering created by the encroaching influence of societal systems we cannot control. Niccol is a writer and director obsessed with detail and form, and there’s only so much control you can have over someone else’s idea.

Anon is a dense and stylish sci-fi film. The acting, production design, editing, sound, and direction are all extremely consistent in tone and intent. It might be a tad too stark and, dare I say, miserable to be truly enjoyed, but I certainly appreciated the experience. I’ve never quite seen a surveillance/dystopia done just like this.

Anon is currently streaming on Netflix.

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