“The Assessment” (2024) is set in the future where people take tablets to arrest the aging process and prevent sexual reproduction. If couples want to have a child, the government puts them through a rigorous seven-day process of testing. Mia (Alicia Vikander) and Aaryan (Himesh Patel) are the perfect couple. They are scientists who hold the keys for their civilization to respectively continue to have food or the comfort of companion animals now that many animals are no longer alive. Their assessor, Virginia (Alicia Vikander), goes above and beyond to test the strength of their relationship and their fitness to be parents. Who is good enough to have children? Bwahahahahaha. (Maniacal laughter.)
It is always a treat to get a movie where all the actors understand the assignment and deliver. After an extended stint with the MCU, Olsen has been racking up indie film points on her resume with this film and “His Three Daughters” (2023), but this movie may allow her to shine more and show her range. Mia is a person comfortable with her body, works with her hands and wants to be a part of something bigger, but is also comfortable with questioning anything that seems off. Out of all the characters, Mia has a strong sense of self. On a base level, if you have a crush on Olsen, “The Assessment” is for you because she is often bra less with her nipples poking and showing through her clothes and having sexy times with her on-screen husband.
Patel and Vikander have the heavier lift. Patel must play a genius who will not make you hate him, remain sympathetic though flawed and still be so infuriating that you want him to be happy, but also do not want him to end up with anyone who is truly magnificent because he is never going to heal. This experience teaches him all the wrong lessons, and he takes a left then barrels down that road. Vikander apparently has experience in switching ages at will from Virginia the examiner to Virginia pretending to be a child. Watching a grown woman playing a child is inherently difficult to watch, but Vikander makes it seem possible that Virginia truly has regressed. When Olsen and Vikander have earnest moments of bonding, it is easier to forget how peculiar the setup is.
A lot of people are stuck on the way that “The Assessment” depicts marriage and parenthood, which is relevant to any discourse about the movie, but miss a few essential points about the movie. Aaryan is the creator of virtual pets and trying to create animals that look and feel real, but something is off. The point of this society is that everyone is pretending that their way of life is normal when it is not. How would someone know what a suitable parent is if people do not have children, and have not had any for a very long time? It is not that the writers Nell Garfath Cox, Dave Thomas (they call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Thomas) and John Donnelly have a misanthropic view of parent child relations, but that these three characters are engaged in a surrealistic play that echoes René Magritte’s “The Treachery of Images” (1929), also known as “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” which translates to “This Is Not a Pipe.” While simultaneously having more authority over, a grown woman inserts herself into a marriage and pretends to be their child, which is straight out of “Orphan” (2009). This scenario is demented, and no one in this universe should accept it. Any psychologically healthy person would not participate in such a farce. Not one of these three people is doing well in life because they do not recognize toxic behavior and exile it from their life.
“The Assessment” is an incisive movie because it depicts how anyone, even the best and brightest, can become a part of cult thinking in an authoritarian government. Every character is simultaneously a culprit and a victim, but the ones pulling their collective strings remain unseen, offscreen. The movie was filmed in Spain, and the themes may be universal, but they are applicable in the US. Strivers, people who work hard to get accolades to feel self-worth as if their existence was not inherently valuable, are particularly vulnerable to group manipulation and are willing to sacrifice their boundaries to achieve, which their parents encourage and are blissfully oblivious to how they are making their children vulnerable to predators. Aaryan is the only character with an onscreen family and history, not a mental image of one like Mia or Virginia, which are memories.
Aaryan’s eagerness to achieve and prove that he is “good enough” leads to a scene that may be triggering. Aaryan’s physical autonomy is constantly violated, and he does not know that he has a right to say no. His bad back also means that he may not be able to physically defend himself. It is fair to be offended at how the characters treat him, but it is an accurate, unflinching and devastating way in which patriarchy lies to people, including men, about men, so they do not recognize that others can victimize them, and their support system does not recognize inherent power imbalances because patriarchal propaganda frames all men as the ones with the most power when it is usually a select few. It makes sense that he would prefer a simulacrum over reality because the reality has been consistently painful.
Virginia is not an obvious victim of the authoritarian government, but in the final, most heavy-handed act, she spells it out until her actions reflect it. She is not just a demented woman who goes in and out of character pretending that she is a kid. She is like her subjects being dangled the promise of a prize if she works hard enough. One reviewer compared “The Assessment” to “Squid Game,” but specifically, Season 2 Episode 1 when the series finally shows what it is like for the torturers. Being a member of the agentic state is soul killing and identity erasing.
“The Assessment” also examines how systemic problems are disguised in America as individual flaws. Aaryan is convinced that if he fails the test, it means that he is an inadequate person. Mia is willing to sacrifice everything for her faith in the state over her true, instinctual commitment to family, which does not include her mother. Within their universe, resistance to the state means deprivation of the elements that lead to a safe, healthy life under the atmospheric dome instead of life over the border. So they conflate Virginia with the state thus immune to questioning her authority and wisdom. They accept her judgment even though her methods are bonkers. Movie goers should not feel superior to the couple. We do it all the time, not just when Presidon’t is in office, but anytime someone in power is blatantly incompetent, dangerous or biased, thought terminating cliches stop us from resisting what we know as wrong. Minnie Driver makes the most of her single appearance on screen and anchors this concept in the narrative. Out of all the characters, she understands their collective predicament.
Director Fleur Fortune’s feature debut is a triumph. Production designer Jan Houllevigue creates a world that is simultaneously earthy and filled with color reminiscent of a Mondrian color blocked painting. A post-apocalyptic world has never been so chic. “The Assessment” is not entirely unpredictable, but it is absorbing for most of its runtime, and it is refreshing to have a dystopian tale that does not require a plethora of special effects.
