The Anarchist Cookbook

Year: 2002 Rating: R Overall Evaluation: 6.5 Significance Suppositions Story Style 8.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 5.0 / 10 6.0 / 10 Click HERE for evaluation criteria.

Style

Rated R for language (some quite crude), sexuality, and drug content. Pretty much what you would expect from a movie of this title - but take note that this is not "dangerously close to Animal House" as some moronic reviewer claimed - it is a dark movie and the R-rated elements are not included in a humorous manner.

Story

This confused story is about an "anarchist" (the filmmaker's definition of this type of person is questionable - see suppositions below) living in an "anarchist" commune. The group is peaceful until a new member joins and basically takes over through coercion, backstabbing, and threats. The result is a group that teams up with dangerous gangs of neo-nazis and your basic white trash racists and others to violently overthrow what they see as government oppression, anti-environmentalism, etc.

[SPOILER WARNING!]

This new tactic results in arrests, drug addiction, and eventually death for the hero's friend. This finally snaps him out of his stupidity and he turns them all in to the FBI.

Suppositions

I am really divided over how to take this film. On the one hand the filmmaker clearly points out the difficulties and self-defeating nature of anarchism. For example the house has no rules - but there is no smoking allowed. Same with drugs, and violence, and cruelty to animals, and . . . and . . . and . . . . I appreciated this, for anarchy has been shown to be a failure every time it has been tried and the simple fact is that no society can be united around not being united. It's simply self-destructive. This is also plainly shown in the actions of the hero. He walks through a grocery store stealing food while talking about how there is no private property. But the only reason he can even hold to this position is because someone produced the food he is stealing! What if he had to grow his own? Would he then mind if someone walked through and stole it all? Of course he would. It's easy to rebel against society when you have room and board waiting at home. Only in a stable society with a mechanism for protecting the rights (not producing them, contra-liberalism) of the people could there even be an anarchist commune such as this.

The problem I had was with the basic portrayal of these "anarchists." No smoking, no drugs, no violence? Please. In fact, the picture of the punk dude on the cover is itself misleading, as most of the characters are pretty regular looking people. The group is basically a hippie commune - hardly anarchy. I mean, the house runs a bookstore with a cash register. Hello? What happened to "No private property?" Again, I liked the fact that these elements in the movie demonstrate how bankrupt the very notion of an anarchist society really is, but the accuracy of the presentation is questionable.

Significance

The message of the movie is right on. Anarchy doesn't work and it leads to tyranny. Sooner or later someone is going to fight for what they want and when the strong, charismatic leader arrives his little "anarchists" can't help but follow him. This leads to the destruction of lives and the hero finally makes the right choice.