Assassination Nation
At a glance...
- Directed by Sam Levinson
- Released in 2018
- Runtime 108 minutes
- Watched at a friend's house
- Final Feelings: loud, stylish, unsubtle, visceral.
Instantly iconic, with political salience to add some real substance to the style. Feels like the perfect encapsulation of the political wasteland that liberals were in post 2016 election. This movie incorporates so many themes that I just love to see in movies, the spectrum between nihilism and resilience that young people experience, the ways reactionary politics projects adult insecurities onto children, the inherent violence bubbling beneath the surface of American suburban life, and the ways that modern surveillance and technology exacerbate all of these things in uniquely hellish ways.
In the moment I felt the ending monologue was maybe a little preachy, but the real ending is the high school marching band from that "other school in the other town" that the principal was talking about in his speech, performing in the fucked up streets, wading through the mess that has been bestowed upon them. An excellent film!