Leave the World Behind

I’ve been prompted by the Netflix algorithm pretty aggressively to watch Leave the World Behind, the 2023 apocalypse film — it said I was a 98% match for the movie. I’ve taken it in over the last couple of days, and I have to grudgingly admit that the algorithm was correct; I really liked it. Here are my impressions; spoilers ahead.

The film’s premise is straightforward — a middle-class Brooklyn couple played by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke take an impromptu family weekend trip to Long Island in a surprisingly posh rental house. Things start going wrong immediately — an oil tanker grounds itself on the beach where they are sunbathing; then Internet and mobile phone service go out.

That night, they’re awakened by the Black owners of the house, a father and daughter played by Mahershala Ali and Myha’la respectively. They’ve come from the city, where there is a severe blackout; they decided not to stay in their Park Avenue home, but instead come back to their country house. The renters, initially reluctant, even when offered a refund, relent when they see that all the television channels are on the emergency broadcast system.

Over the course of a few days, the families settle into an uneasy truce, as they realise that a serious attack on the United States has taken place. They endure sonic attacks, crashing airplanes and runaway self-driving cars, and increasingly strange animal behaviour. Ultimately, as the children suffer greater and greater hardship, they find a bunker in a nearby mansion to settle into, as mushroom clouds rise over the Manhattan skyline in the distance.

The underlying premise is fairly direct — that a foreign power, or a coalition of them, has used cyberattacks to weaken America’s resolve and spread terror. With a frayed social fabric, Americans may do the job for the attackers by turning on each other. What leadership there is in the country abdicates any responsibility, moves their investments electronically, and moves off to what we can expect is comfortable exile.

The acting was masterful. With only the faintest of brushstrokes, Roberts shows off the racist assumptions of white culture (she insists that the owners are really scammers, or maybe the handyman and housekeeper). Hawke’s character is easy-going and cavalier about his privilege. The gender dynamics in their relationship is roiling and unstable.

All the relationships are telling — between the renter dad and the owner’s daughter; between the owner and the mom; between the mom and the owner’s daughter. Probably the most difficult is the one between the renters’ older son and his younger sister, who dangles perilously at the margin of the social group. Her disconnection, and her resolve to start looking out for herself (inspired by an episode of West Wing), drives the story to its conclusion.

I was pretty deeply troubled by the story, in the shadow of the war currently underway in Gaza. I could not help but notice the parallels — absence of medical facilities, destroyed roads, information blackouts, bombings — between the experience of the TV characters and the real experience of the civilian population there. The characters’ absolute befuddlement that such attacks would happen to Americans, without understanding that they happen to people around the world every day, is richly ironic.

Most of all, I found the natural world’s disruption unsettling. Roberts’s character has a monologue at the end where she notes how little Americans actually care about the effects of their own actions on other people in the world or the animals and plants in it. It’s a little blunt and heavy-handed, but so well-written and delivered so expertly that it definitely broke through.

I’d recommend the movie if you’ve got Netflix (and sorry for the spoilers). It’s definitely given me a lot to think about.