LECTION: A Poorly Paced Post-Apocalyptic Political Thriller

David Axe’s film, Lection, is a political thriller, focusing on an election, within the world of a post-apocalyptic society. Lection stars Sanethia Dresch, Jennifer Hill, Bradley J. Petit, and Mike Amason. Lection film follows Dot (Sanethia Dresch) as she challenges the mayor (Mike Amason) in their local election.

Pacing Problems

Lection starts out strong, showing us the bloody end of a prior election, now called lection from the society’s changing language after a unseen apocalyptic collapse. But from this moment, we are moved forward 25 years, and the momentum feels lost when the film spends so much time trying to establish the world, something that was done quickly and concisely in the opening scene.

Spending so much time, and only really giving us one key concept of their society: bread is rare and the people in power keep most of it for themselves. As I was watching Lection, I felt like barely any aspects of their society were explored and established, but it still took too much of the running time before the election is announced, and even more before we see Dot as the challenger.

Lection loses momentum by spending so much time before getting to its central problem. If the long world-building moments of the film gave us more information and were more interesting, the length could have worked, but so little was revealed, I felt as if I was watching the same thing happen over and over, providing the same piece of information about their society again and again.

Logical Issues in their Society

One of the main thoughts that kept coming up as I watched Lection is its concept of changed language, which is something I would love to see explored in film, but the way Lection shows language evolving or devolving feels easy and too big a change for the near future feeling that comes through in the film’s costume choices and society.

For a society where people have forgotten how to communicate with each other, at the same time, they feel too closely related to our own society, and not in the metaphorical political ways the film wants you to feel. The language of this post-apocalyptic world endlessly reminded me of the moments in The Office where Kevin decides he should use fewer words to save time, which I understand as a view of society where people do not communicate as much as they used to, but it feels forced and too drastic a change to make in a society that doesn’t feel distant enough to justify.

The language by itself isn’t my main logical issue. I can see where the filmmakers were going with it, and if it did not feel so drastic, it could have worked. My bigger issue is when the film forgets its own logic and has characters writing campaign posters where every word is misspelled, while they sit in a room filled with books. Characters read books to themselves and later on, aloud, never getting tripped up by any words, yet when talking to other people, they can only manage a few words.

An Overpowering Score

At first, I thought the score of Lection would be its saving grace, something to add tension when scenes felt overlong and unnecessary, but as the film went on, I realized how similar the music feels during the entire run time. It does add tension occasionally, but the music is at the same intensity and style throughout almost every single scene, negating the power it did have early on by overloading the audience.

The score also felt too loud for the few scenes where we hear dialogue. These infrequent moments of communication would have landed harder if they could easily be heard, and weren’t drowned out by music, especially when you already have to piece together what words are omitted in their new language to gather the meaning of each sentence. Doing this when I could barely hear the dialogue to begin with took me away from the film, losing all the symbolism that could have come through which words were important enough to hear spoken in the film.

In addition to the score, the quality of ambient sounds and even the dialogue felt muffled at times, and too loud at others. Background sounds felt as if they were too far away. Dialogue was lost underneath layers of music and other sounds, and since the dialogue is so limited in the film, every word, chosen with precision, needs to be heard.

Political Commentary

Lection could have been a stronger film if its political commentary felt more interesting and developed throughout the film. I personally did not feel like the film had anything very unique to say about our political system. The metaphor felt more like a vague notion of political campaigns turning violent, which yes, can still be seen in our own society, but it’s the sort of statement I’ve heard said by almost everyone at one point or another.

Lection feels like it has potential to be a tense, low budget thriller with political undertones, but the film feels more like a basic metaphorical statement thrown over the top of a slow-paced film that rarely feels thrilling.

Because the political commentary feels so on-the-surface, I can’t pride it for its political thriller aspirations, and pretend that there’s something deeper and darker being said underneath everything. There were no moments of discovery in making connections between our current world and this post-apocalyptic one, even in the slightly more tense moments. Political commentary is something more difficult to portray creatively in film, and with Lection, I felt like they had an idea, but didn’t explore it much past the surface connections between violence and political elections.

Lection: Conclusion

Lection started with a strong opening scene, but its pace slowed down from that moment and never regained its traction through the rest of this post-apocalyptic political thriller. On top of that, it does not have enough to say about our current political atmosphere.

Are you interested in a post-apocalyptic view of elections and politics? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Lection will be released in theaters in 2020.