USA. 2023.
Crew
Director/Screenplay – Sam Esmail, Based on the Novel Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam, Producers – Sam Esmail, Marisa Yeres Gill, Lisa Gillan, Chad Hamilton & Julia Roberts, Photography – Tod Campbell, Music – Mac Quayle, Visual Effects Supervisor – Chris Harvey, Visual Effects – Distillery VFX (Supervisor – Greg Kegel), Framestore (Supervisor – Avi Goodman), Image Engine (Supervisor – Hannes Poser), Instinctual (Supervisor – Alan Latteri) & El Ranchito (Supervisors – Isaac de la Pompa & Oscar Perea Marcos), Special Effects Supervisor – Devin Maggio, Production Design – Anastasia White. Production Company – Esmail Corp/Red Om Films/Higher Ground Productions.
Cast
Julia Roberts (Amanda Sandford), Mahershala Ali (G.H. Scott), Ethan Hawke (Clay Sandford), Myha’la (Ruth Scott), Farrah McKenzie (Rose Sandford), Charlie Evans (Archie Sandford), Kevin Bacon (Danny), Vanessa Aspillaga (Salvadora)
Plot
Amanda Sandford makes the impromptu decision to get away from New York City for a week. She, along with her husband Clay and their two children Archie and Rose, rent a house at Long Island. Soon after arriving they find all internet and cellular services are out. At the beach, they watch as an oil tanker runs aground. That evening, they are interrupted by G.H. Scott, the African-American owner of the house, and his daughter Ruth, who are asking to come and stay, offering a refund. G.H. says that the power is out in their apartment in the city and they have come there because he cannot climb the stairs due to his knee. Amanda is suspicious but Clay agrees to let them stay in the basement. As they settle into a hesitant cohabitation the next day, it becomes apparent that the threat is more serious than a power cut with planes falling out of the sky, strange loud noises, animals acting unnaturally and Archie’s teeth starting to fall out.
This is a film adaptation of the novel Leave the World Behind (2020), the third book by Riumaan Alam, the child of Bangladeshi family that had emigrated to the US. The book received a good deal of critical praise and was nominated for the National Book Award. The film rights were subject to a bidding war. The most eye-opening names on the credits are those of former US President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle as Executive Producers. Since leaving office, the Obamas have formed Higher Ground Productions, dedicated to producing works that elevate diverse voices. Their output so far has included the films Worth (2020) and Fatherhood (2021), along with assorted tv and documentary work.
The film version has been placed in the hands of Sam Esmail, the son of Egyptian immigrants to the US. After working as an editor and screenwriter, including co-writing Bryan Bertino’s Mockingbird (2014), Esmail made his directorial debut with Comet (2014), a relationship drama that is set in a parallel universe. Esmail’s calling came with his creation of the hit hacker tv series Mr. Robot (2015-9), followed by directing/producing the series Homecoming (2018-20), which also starred Julia Roberts. Leave the World Behind was Esmail’s second film as director.
Leave the World Behind reminds of a spate of Catastrophe and End of the World films that came out in the early 2010s that included the likes of The Divide (2011), 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011), Melancholia (2011), It’s a Disaster (2012), Goodbye World (2013), Into the Forest (2015) and Silent Night (2021), which focus on disasters on a personal level and show people in their homes as they deal with a widespread threat beyond their doors.
The catastrophe throughout is never clearly specified. Both Mahershala Ali and Kevin Bacon repeat rumours they heard that it was a terrorist attack. This would appear to be the case with the internet and cellular outage or the leaflet drops and scenes of the tankers and driverless cars being driven to crash. On the other hand, this doesn’t quite explain aspects such as the strange animal behaviour. Scenes that would be key aspects of any earlier catastrophe film – the rioting, shooting, detonation of nuclear weapons – is something only seen or heard at a distance.
On the other hand, as in most of the abovementioned cases, Leave the World Behind is not so much an examination of the mechanism of social collapse as it is a depiction of what happens to a cross-section of people when the carpet of civilised amenities is yanked out from underneath them. Key to the film is the issue of trust between the two families that plays right throughout – from Julia Robert’s suspicion of strangers to Myha’la voicing concerns about the sexual intent of father Ethan Hawke and son Charlie Evans to the impassioned plea that Ethan Hawke makes to Kevin Bacon’s survivalist to put down his every person for themselves attitude nd help them. Crucially through, the two families are drawn across racial lines. This is not a stark drama about racial prejudice but you can see the simmering distrust, mostly on Julia Robert’s part, that lies not far beneath the surface.
Leave the World Behind comes with a majorly impressive casting line-up, including two Academy Award winners in Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali. Julia Roberts surprises in taking on the least likeable role in the show, while Mahershala Ali is at his charismatic best. I also appreciated Myha’la [Herrold] who had made quite an impression of me watching her at the same time as this in the British tv series Industry (2020- ).
Stripped down to a plot description, Leave the World Behind could be no more than just another one of the abovementioned catastrophe films and could easily play out more routinely in someone else’s hands. With Esmail at the directing/writing helm, the film comes in a series of vivid scenes – the tanker running aground at the beach, Mahershala Ali witnessing a plane coming down from the sky, a massed pile-up of driverless cars, the grotesque scene where Charlie Evans’ teeth start falling out. Yet for all that, Leave the World Behind is not a film about catastrophe or widescale disaster, it is more an interpersonal work of naked anxiety – what happens and what emerges when the familiar things that hold the modern world together start to fall apart. As such it is an absorbing work.
The film did come in for some criticism for its ending where [PLOT SPOILERS] Farrah McKenzie finds the survival bunker and finally sits down to watch the final episode of Friends (1994-2004). I am not sure if it is people found it a letdown because they were expecting an ending that offered more standard wrap-up or explanations, or it is just the general antipathy there is towards Friends these days, but it worked perfectly for me. The whole film’s theme is about how civilised amenity falls apart when our reliance on technological devices is shut off. (Not that we actually ever see much in the way of people reduced to raw survival, the group never reach a point where they run out of food, for instance). The ending is one that you can see in an ironic contrast where it allows Farrah to find closure by returning to what she has called her happy place in life. Just like the rest of the film’s unspoken anxieties it leaves you with a sense of unease – that you can celebrate the momentary emotional happiness she finds with the knowledge that beyond that lies the daunting of question of what awaits next.
(Nominee for Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali) at this site’s Best of 2023 Awards).
Trailer here