The editor has finished editing my story and sent it back two days earlier. I haven’t had the time to review it but today, on Christmas Eve, I will. Part of me wonders if she rushed through it as it wasn’t due till today or perhaps this is just the way they work. Now don’t misunderstand me, I am pleased that the work is done but didn’t expect to be getting it back earlier than the deadline they set. So, I will go through it, and I don’t always agree with some edits to my work but it’s always a good idea to hire strangers and professionals to read through it as there are still writers, out there, who don’t even bother to have their books edited and go right into publication. This is a gross error! Get your manuscript edited!
Now with that perfunctory out the way let me get right into it and give my take on the Netflix apocalyptic movie, Leave the World Behind. This movie has garnered a lot of attention in the past few weeks. It is adapted from a 2020 novel written by author, Rumaan Alam and directed by Sam Esmail. The producers were the Obamas which to me is very eyeopening and made me think if this could also be a political message.
The plot involves a family of four New Yorkers on a vacation which is ruined by the first stages of their country’s collapse. I didn’t use global because it’s centered on the US so we don’t see if the knockout of technology and transportation going haywire is happening in other nations though it’s plausible it could be happening elsewhere the story was focused on a few characters in a region. We do get the sense that there is this ominous threat looming and that the US is under attack somehow, possibly by individuals or foreign powers and also from within. The movie isn’t really an action packed adventure nor does it claim to be unlike movies similar to it. It does however have some action but is more focused on psychologically and the emotional reactions of the characters. Here we have well-know veteran actors Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke as a married middle-class couple Amanda and Clay Sandford with professional careers and teenage children, played by Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie as Archie and Rose.
Julia Roberts’ character, Amanda, is the unhappy wife who certainly doesn’t respect her husband, Clay, and comes across as the alpha B-boss in the marriage. I certainly got that impression when watching it. Ethan Hawke’s character, Clay, is weak and emasculated throughout the movie a little bit mild-mannered and not aggressive like his wife. We see him do a somewhat cowardly disturbing act in the movie and tell a lie after it. I was left wondering what happened to the poor distraught woman he left stranded by the roadside. There’s even racial elements in the movie, that aren’t hidden prior to when Mahershala Ali’s character, George ‘G H’ Washington, popping up with his daughter, Ruth Washington, played by Myha’la Herrod, claiming back their home they rented to the family. The tensions between the characters, of course, thickens even from the occurrence of loud strange sounds and the odd behaviour of wildlife. The sexual tension is there also with the dysfunctional son ā Archie ā constantly perving at Ruth, and Amanda slow dancing with George in a private room in the home while Clay is taken aback by Ruth’s outspokenness and prods at the poolside as they smoke.
The way the movie was shot is smart in its conveyance. It’s split into titled chapters almost like a book not forgetting the story is from a book. Shots are tilted at times with a pianist playing in the background, again giving that movie a sinister undertone that things just aren’t right. I got the impression of a modern day Hitchcock and reminded me of Cape Fear (1991), a completely different film and genre. We do see some brief devastation and destruction of infrastructure even though I wouldn’t classify it as a disaster movie and don’t think many viewers would. The movie is loaded with coded messages, most are historical, that not everyone will pick up on. I picked up on a few but all are too numerous for me to detail.
I think one of the great aspects this film depicts is our reliance on technology and how it can be corrupted and weaponised. Here we take technology for granted and I often ask myself what would happen if everything ceased working completely. Other films and shows, in the past, have portrayed this trope already but here we see a gradual to immediate decline, where phones, the internet, and electricity stop functioning. Planes fall out of the sky, and vehicles become more dangerous and useless also. You cannot even escape or hope to survive if the highways are blocked by crashed self-driven cars. There is talk, by George, of satellites not working and silent shots of the world from space and a satellite. These small cut scenes are clearly trying to tell us something. Kevin bacon’s character, Danny, is the standoffish survival prepper, and only shows up a couple of times, and the man who seems to harness more answers as to what is actually going on, displaying more tell than show which is just as effective. The standoff seen between the three men and Clay’s plea for help from Danny is monumental.
That is my take on the movie but in the meantime Happy Holidays!