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Diane Lane credits Kyle Chandler with helping to lighten the heavy mood when they made the new dystopian drama Anniversary.
“Kyle Chandler really is a sunbeam,” Lane, 60, tells PEOPLE of Chandler, 60, who plays her husband in the film. “He really is a very warm, loving soul, and we did create a sense of family and a sense of humor about our experience, which is necessary when you’re filming something that requires high emotional stakes.”
Directed by Jan Komasa, Anniversary features Lane and Chandler as Ellen and Paul Taylor, a happily married, well-to-do couple who are parents of four children: Anna (Madeline Brewer), a stand-up comic; Cynthia (Zoey Deutch), an environmental lawyer; Josh (Dylan O’Brien), an aspiring writer and quiet teen Birdie (Mckenna Grace).
When college professor Ellen and restaurateur Paul host their 25th anniversary party, Josh introduces them to his new girlfriend Liz (Phoebe Dynevor). Before long, Ellen remembers Liz was a former student who wrote a thesis filled with anti-democratic ideas.
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Though Ellen thought her sentiments were fringe, Liz has published a book called The Change, which advocates for a single party system of government that purports to unite everyone, but is in fact authoritarian.
The film jumps forward in time to show how The Change becomes a movement that takes hold of the country while dividing citizens — and the Taylor family itself. Josh, for one, gets sucked into the movement while Anna speaks out against it publicly, much to her misfortune.
Lane says making the movie in this highly polarized political climate “felt a little too close to home.”
“We never thought we would be seeing the canceling of humor, but that seems to be a theme that occurs in authoritarian scenarios and our film deals with that,” continues Lane, who notes “the parallels between our fictitious story and the realities of what we’re living in a dystopian kind of current events.”
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“It’s rather challenging to believe that something that we thought was very hyperbolic has become tamed a bit by the headlines, and it’s a little bit surprising,” she adds.
Anniversary is a perfect movie for spooky season, quips Lane: “I’m glad we’re coming out for Halloween because I think we’re apropos.”
Anniversary is in theaters nationwide now.
