'Leave the World Behind' is the 'Civil War' That Already Exists

Julia Roberts and Mahershali Ali in Netflix's most-watched film this week.

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The other day, A24 released the trailer for Alex Garland’s Civil War. Everyone on social media seemed to have a take on this one, mostly for reasons easy to understand. One, it’s an Alex Garland movie (Men, Annihilation, Ex-Machina); two, it comes from A24 and is actually their biggest budgeted movie to date ($75 million). And three… well, it looks kind of stupid.

It does have a whiff of the trying-too-hard about it, doesn’t it? It seems an easy symbol for A24’s recently announced push to become “more commercial” — which is usually code for “stupider” — a turn which may or may not be related to private equity getting a big chunk of A24 last year. If anyone could ruin A24, it’s private equity.

Still, trailers aren’t movies, and Alex Garland movies are historically pretty good (Men wasn’t, but artists are allowed to whiff on a big swing every now and then). I still hold out hope that it might be good.

Then the other night I watched Leave the World Behind. Leave the World Behind is the new movie from Mr. Robot creator Sam Esmail (apparently this week’s most-watched film on Netflix) and it seemed to scratch most of the itches Civil War was trying to (or that the Civil War trailer was, anyway).

Netflix

If the idea of “civil war” is the most on-the-nose way to express feelings of loneliness and mass alienation in an environment of polarized mass media, Leave the World Behind comes at the same themes from a more personal, “hell is other people” angle, trading big action for slowly building dread. It feels like the correct decision, one that doesn’t require accepting all the far-fetched political stuff up front like Civil War (California and Texas teaming up, say).

Leave the World Behind stars Julia Roberts as Amanda Sandford, a sort of misanthropic wine mom with Karen tendancies (I’m sorry) whom we meet while she yaks on the phone with her ad agency coworkers in the car with the family on the way to their weekend getaway on Long Island. The goal is, you guessed it, to “leave the world behind.” The whole family goes along: Dad Clay, a sort of feckless media studies professor (too soon!) played by Ethan Hawke, horny teen son Archie (Charlie Evans) and horror movie weird-girl daughter, Rose (Farrah Mackenzie), who is obsessed with Friends.

The Sandfords aren’t especially dysfunctional, just sort of disconnected in the modern way. Mom thinking about work, dad daydreaming about hot students, son getting sexts, daughter wishing she could finally find out what happens with Rachel and Ross. They’re sort of a collection of islands, a family archipelago. The score and cinematography foreshadow the weird shit that soon starts happening. As the family relaxes on the beach, an oil tanker seems to stray closer and closer to the beach, until eventually it runs aground, sending the Sandfords and the other beachgoers scattering. (I’m pretty sure the keel on an oil tanker would’ve ran it aground half a mile out, but a spray of sand and salt is nicely cinematic).

Back at their mega modernist Air Bnb mansion, the Sandford’s lose wifi, internet access, and cellular connection, presumably from whatever electronic disruption also caused the ship to run aground. The purpose of the conceit is obvious — uh oh, now they have to connect! Esmail wisely doesn’t overplay this angle, more concerned with building an atmosphere of alienation and uncertainty than exploring what happens when a family gets real. (Thank God — “the kids these days are always on their screens!” is both the prevailing condition of our times and painfully dull as a stand-alone observation).

Into this mix bumbles G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali) and his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la, formerly Myha’la Herrold), who show up on the doorstep that night claiming to be the vacation house’s owners and needing a place to stay that night. This thanks to a blackout in the city, where they were. Roberts’ character is inclined not to believe them, even though G.H. is wearing a tuxedo and, as with all Mahershala Ali characters, has the kind of buttered leather voice that could convince me to buy anything. Ethan Hawke’s character, meanwhile, thinks everyone should just chill out, as Ethan Hawke characters are wont, and is easily swayed by G.H.’s offer to pour some cocktails.

Ruth senses racism behind Amanda’s unwillingness to believe them, and as a stereotypical bratty college student (not to mention one from a family rich enough to have investment properties), she thinks her snarkiness is much subtler than it actually is. Amanda easily picks up what Ruth is laying down, they both have plausibile deniability for their positions (the Scotts are black, but also strangers), and it becomes a sort of mutually-enforcing feedback loop of reciprocal irritation. Both actresses are making a meal out of it (“bratty college girl” seems to be Myha’la’s main speed as an actress, even before she started going by one name) setting up a slightly on-the-nose Disapproving Karen vs. Entitled College Twat dynamic, with both trying to outdo each other for dislikability while the boys attempt to peacemake (women, you know?).

Characters acting obnoxiously within a contrived setup is tough to pull off in fiction (our skepticism pushing back against the plot while simultaneously finding fault with the characters), but Esmail as a writer and Roberts and Myha’la as actors are deft enough to push the material right up to its breaking point before dialing it back just enough to keep it in the realm of the plausible.

Their personal dynamic is just stage setting, after all, for the film’s Big Mystery. What the hell is going on? Events seem to be spiraling. Planes are falling from the sky. Animals are acting strange. Archie’s teeth are falling out.

Making the apocalyptic plot a mystery and not front-loading it has the obvious upside of letting Esmail string us along (as opposed to making us go “aw, horseshit!” the second we see the trailer). The corrollary is that at some point he has to lay his cards on the table and explain the mystery we’re all there to see solved, hopefully wrapping it up with an explanation sound enough to make us feel like our investment was worth it. Esmail (adapting here from a novel by Rumaan Alam) does an enjoyable job exploring side quests and the knock-on effects of a total information blackout and simply letting the Big Mystery simmer (Garland played similar games in 28 Days Later). The clues are tantalizing and strange (deer acting weird, planes dropping leaflets) and it’s fun watching Hawke and Ali bumble around trying to figure things out (Kevin Bacon also shows up as a survivalist townie neighbor).

As for the big reveal, here again Esmail veers impressionistic. Mahershala Ali and Julia Roberts both get their cracks at a big monologue expressing what, exactly, Esmail was after with this whole thing. The denouement (Charlie Kaufman saying “that’s not how it’s pronounced” in Adaptation echoes through my head every time I type this word) comes not by way of a big explanation, but with an ironically triumphant coping mechanism.

Leave the World Behind’s ending is tantamount to a troll, either an unforgivable sin of omission or a clever way for Esmail to have his cake and eat it too, depending on your perspective. He certainly extends theme without explaining, and as the credits rolled, I could practically hear the collective groan from the blogosphere, in a hypothetical scenario where the blogosphere still existed.

And yet… I was not disappointed. Did I take some vicarious thrill in the trolling? Certainly a little, but I also enjoyed the acknowledgement that the explanation of these things is rarely as satisfying as the mystery.

Still, half the people reading this are probably here because they saw the movie already and wanted someone to shout about it for them. You want spoilers? Fuck it, let’s spoil.

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The film ends when the Sandford’s horror movie weird-girl daughter Rose wanders into the Scott’s neighbors’ abandoned doomsday bunker. The bunker has everything — non-perishable food, a huge supply of potable drinking water, and most importantly to Rose, a huge rack of DVDs. Could it be…? Yep, they even have the Friends boxed set. With her parents missing, her brother possibly turning into a werewolf, and the world generally crumbling around her, Rose fires up the final episode she’d been dying to see all along. Leave the World Behind’s credits roll to the strains of the Rembrandts famous theme song, “I’ll Be There For You.” Deern deerner de deern deern da neer nert.

It feels fitting on a number of levels. The film had already set up an obvious socialism-or-barbarism angle through Kevin Bacon’s character. Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali’s characters show up to his house asking for medicine for Archie, and Bacon’s character (wearing a Dallas Cowboys cap, ha) has to decide whether to murder them and protect his homestead, or be a mensch and help them out.

An earnest victory for either worldview (Bacon’s or Hawke’s) probably would’ve felt preachy. Esmail doesn’t solve the mystery, but he stays on-brand. What’s Leave The World Behind about? Leaving the world behind, of course. Faced with a choice between socialism or barbarism, most of us go with escapism. Easier to build a bunker than build consensus. Isn’t that a nihilistic copout? Isn’t it a little on-the-nose that in the end Rose’s only friends are… Friends? Sure, but it’s also funny. There’s a symmetry to it and it has the ring of truth. And hey, wouldn’t it be a little silly to expect a movie about loneliness and alienation to solve loneliness and alienation? Leave the World Behind is a mood.