"Everything is as it should be."

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Leave the World Behind (Netflix): A Review - It's the End of the World as We Know It...and Obama Feels Fine

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. This film never lives up to its potential but it does feature some impressive cinematography and a tantalizing and unnerving narrative. It isn’t a great movie but it does make for a good conversation/thought piece.

Leave the World Behind, written and directed by Sam Esmail, is a dystopian, apocalyptic, psychological thriller produced by Barrack and Michelle Obama now streaming on Netflix.

The film, which stars Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali, is based on the novel of the same name by Ruuman Alam, and it tells the story of the Sanford and Scott families as they navigate an unfolding cataclysm across the U.S. from a tony neighborhood on Long Island.

The Sanford’s, a white family from Park Slope-adjacent Brooklyn, made up of the ornery Amanda (Julia Roberts), her easy-going husband Clay (Ethan Hawke), and their teenage children Archie (Charlie Evans), who is obsessed with girls, and Rose (Farrah McKenzie), who is obsessed with 90s pop culture – like Friends and The West Wing, rent a beautiful home at the beach on Long Island for a week.

In the middle of their first night, there’s a knock at the door, and two black people, G.H. (Mahershala Ali) and Ruth (Myha’la), appear. The story between the Sanfords and the Scotts go from there but I won’t get any more in-depth on it in order to avoid spoilers.

The rest of the plot revolves around mysterious events that are happening in the U.S., specifically in relation to the Sanfords and Scotts, in New York City.

Technology, such as cell phones, the internet and cable television, stop working, leaving the protagonists in an information and communication blackout, which allows chaos and paranoia to flourish.

Once again, in order to avoid spoilers, I will refrain from delving much deeper into the plot than that.

The film’s director, Sam Esmail, is best known for creating the tv series Mr. Robot, but this is just his second feature film, and despite some very bright spots, at times it shows.

To Esmail’s great credit, he creates some very vivid and stunning images in Leave the World Behind, that rattle viewers to the core. Visually the film never fails to unnerve with one apocalyptic nightmare visual after another, like luxurious paintings hanging in a dystopian art gallery.

Esmail and cinematographer Tod Campbell use an often swirling, spinning, panning, zooming and rotating camera to make the viewer just as discombobulated and disoriented as the characters portrayed on-screen. All this camera movement isn’t just directorial masturbation, but instead is very cinematically effective and done with an admirable amount of precision and creative dexterity. As the character’s go through their strange journey, Esmail’s camera leaves viewers in a world where up is down, and left is right…literally.

The same is true of the camera framing, as things are often shot from odd angles, and despite the visuals being crisp and amid razor-sharp straight lines, everything is framed off-kilter and off-center, to great affect.

Unfortunately, as much as I loved the look of the film, the story it shows and the drama it reveals are often sorely lacking.

The biggest issue with Leave the World Behind is that it is bursting with a cavalcade of dramatic potential, but is never able to fully realize it.

The greatest obstacle to the film’s dramatic success is that it gives us one-dimensional, unreal characters, places them in an extreme yet compelling and entirely believable situation, and then has them behave in the most inane, counter-intuitive and annoying ways imaginable.

I can’t give too much away in regards to specifics, but things happen, and characters behave, in ways, both big and small, that are just ridiculous beyond belief and it frankly ruins the film as the tension and drama are undermined by these egregious plot and character improbabilities and decisions.

There’s a bit at the end which is meant to be poignant, and could have been really terrific, but is ultimately neutered by a failure of Esmail to thoroughly impress upon the audience, through repetition or targeted intensity, the crucial pieces involved. (Again, I am being intentionally vague to avoid spoilers.)

As for the cast, they do the best they can with the rather shallow characters they’ve been given.

Julia Roberts’ Amanda is basically an upper-middle class, left-of-center Karen, exercising her mid-life crisis muscles by being an irritable bitch for reasons she will never even try to understand. Roberts is a steady screen presence but she has never brought much of interest to the table and Leave the World Behind is no exception.

Ethan Hawke has matured into a solid actor and his good-natured Clay is a passable and likable attempt at an everyman – if ‘everyman’ were a college professor of English and Media Studies. It’s the character of Clay that is much more troubling than the actor portraying him, as Clay is the clueless, sack-less white man incapable of not only defending himself but of mustering the courage to even attempt it.

Charlie Evans and Farrah Mackenzie play the teens Archie and Rose respectively, and there isn’t much to the characters or the actor’s performances. Neither of them jumps off the screen or generates the least bit of magnetism.

Mahershala Ali is, as always, a strong presence on-screen, but his character G.H., is an absurd stand-in for the film’s producer Barrack Obama. G.H. is impeccable. He is unfailingly good, smarter than everyone and entirely incapable of cowardice. He is principled, moral, ethical, noble, brave and above all…correct. Yawn. The truth is that there were twists and turns that could’ve occurred with G.H. to make him more interesting, but they never happen and so we are left with little more than a cardboard cutout of the man that Barrack Obama, and his slavish sycophants, thinks he is - paging Dr. Freud…narcissism alert!

Myha’la as Ruth Scott is fine, I guess, but again, she doesn’t have much with which to work. Ruth is, like G.H., better than everyone else…I suppose simply because of her immutable characteristics…namely that she is black and a woman. Like Roberts’ Amanda, Ruth is an incorrigible bitch but it’s ok because she’s just speaking her truth…or something like that.

The genuine drama between Ruth and G.H., and between the Sanfords and the Scotts, is eschewed in favor of a rather tepid, embarrassingly trite, middle-of-the-road, decidedly elitist and liberal, high school freshman level identity/race politics that feels forced and obscenely phony, which is very unfortunate.

Speaking of politics, the fact that the Obamas produced this movie, the first non-documentary film they’ve produced, is both telling and, frankly, quite unnerving.

The apocalyptic, dystopian, and totally believable plot of Leave the World Behind, and Obama’s insider status among the power elite, makes it feel like this movie isn’t a piece of fiction but rather a piece of predictive programming…or enlightened prophecy, as to what awaits us.

That may sound irrational, or like “conspiratorial thinking” – something that is lambasted in the film as being unserious despite it being proven correct in the story (and more and more often in real life), but whether conscious or unconscious, artists and art often have a way of showing us the catastrophe that is right around the corner. 9/11 is a recent example of this.

The film is marinated in an establishment politics that is entirely rigid, center-left and upper-class. This elitist, left-liberal orthodoxy is so deeply ingrained in the movie that most-mainstream, establishment indoctrinated viewers won’t even recognize, and if they did they wouldn’t see it as political.

I’ll write a much more in-depth, political, psychological analysis of the film in the coming days, but will state here only that this movie is riddled with as much insidious propaganda as anything I’ve seen in any feature film in recent times.

Whether it be subtle, or not-so-subtle, attacks on libertarians, right-wingers, white people, conspiracies, and even Elon Musk, or anything else that isn’t establishment approved, the film never fails to be in complete lockstep with mainstream orthodoxy as designed by the aristocracy and oligarchy.

In this way the film, despite its attempt to present itself as edgy and politically avant-garde/revolutionary, is, at its heart, an intellectually and dramatically flaccid but ideologically faithful homage to the status quo….just like the former President who produced it.

In conclusion, Leave the World Behind is chock full of dramatic potential but is never able to fully realize it. Despite some compelling visuals and sequences, the film’s dramatic and narrative failures ultimately leave it an unsatisfying viewing experience.

Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

A Must Read: The Five Best Films of All Time

 

ESTIMATED READING TIME : FIVE MINUTES

Film is the most collaborative of all art forms. Writers, directors, actors, cinematographers, editors, musicians, set designers, wardrobe, lighting designers and dozens, if not hundreds, of other artists all working together to tell a story and create a piece of art. With so many moving parts, and so many things that could go wrong, it is a minor miracle to even get a film made. To make a great film is a staggering achievement. To make one of the top five films of all time, is a testament to the incredible talent, hard work and artistry of the people who made them. 

These five films stand as the pinnacle of artistic achievement in filmmaking. They will live on as a monument for future generations to look upon and see the greatness our species has residing deep within its heart and soul. 

Let us look upon these masterworks and find our own inspiration to reach higher in our own lives, dig deeper into our own souls and artistically strive to capture the ever elusive magical perfection that is so beautifully on display in these gems.

Without further ado…I give you the top five films of all time.

5. JACK

Jack is, without question, esteemed director Francis Ford Coppola's greatest film. The film boasts one of the greatest ensemble casts ever assembled, with Diane Lane, Jennifer Lopez, Fran Drescher and Bill Cosby all starring alongside lead actor Robin Williams. Williams plays Jack Powell, a young boy who grows four times faster than normal due to a disease. This performance shows Williams at the height of his dramatic powers and he gives a transcendently resplendent and authentic performance. Williams unforgettable and brutally realistic portrayal, without the slightest whiff of sentimentality, is the lynch pin that makes Jack Coppola's crowning achievement.

 

4. STRIKING DISTANCE

When you put the greatest actor, and the greatest actress of a generation in a film together, magic is bound to happen. Striking Distance is living proof of that. This uncommonly original film stars Bruce Willis as a Pittsburgh Police River Rescue Squad cop, and boasts a supporting turn from Sarah Jessica Parker as his new partner. When you take two magnetic performers known for being artistically daring and committed like Willis and Parker, and add in the pulse-pounding excitement and prestige of the life of Pittsburgh river cops, you get the combustible magnificence that is Striking Distance. An absolutely heart-racing, gut-wrenching and mind-blowing film that speaks to the stoic and noble Pittsburgh River Cop in all of us.

3. CUTTHROAT ISLAND

Director Renny Harlin's swashbuckling magnum opus is, without any doubt, the greatest big budget pirate movie ever made. The film stars the luminous Geena Davis in the penultimate role of her career as pirate Morgan Adams. Legendary actor Matthew Modine's tour-de-force supporting performance as con-man and thief William Shaw is as good as anything ever captured on film. Combine the mastery of America's two most gifted actors with an incredibly intricate script, and Harlin's deft and subtle touch and you have a masterpiece of epic proportions. Cutthroat Island is such a treasure that it is universally recognized as the last word in the dramatic-action genre. There will never be another Cutthroat Island, there CAN never be another Cuthroat Island, there MUST never be another Cutthroat Island.

2. I LOVE TROUBLE

In 1994, when word came out that the two most talented actors on the planet, Julia Roberts and Nick Nolte, had agreed to work together, cinephiles were all a buzz. Then, when those same cinephiles heard the story these two masters were going to be bringing to life, the buzz morphed into an all out frenzy. The story of the film is summed up thusly, "rival Chicago reporters Sabrina Peterson (Roberts) and Peter Brackett (Nolte) reluctantly join forces to uncover a train wreck that leads to the discovery of genetically altered milk conspiracy. They bite off more than they can chew while pursuing the story, and fall in love."

This is one of those stories that is so rare and originally unique as to be pioneering. I Love Trouble is an incomparably taut drama, a raucous and laugh out loud comedy, an exquisitely tender love story and a remarkably nail-biting mystery-thriller, all impeccably wrapped up in one. Add in Roberts and Nolte at the pinnacle of their artistic genius, and you have, unquestionably, the second greatest film ever made.

1. CAPTAIN RON

Captain Ron is the story of Ron (Kurt Russell), a sailor with a quirky personality and a checkered past, and Martin (Martin Short), a middle-class family man who hires Ron to sail a yacht through the Carribean with Martin and his family aboard. Captain Ron is universally hailed as Kurt Russell's masterwork, and is the crowning achievement for the man most consider the greatest actor the world has ever known.  The film is at once a brooding character study, showcased by the intensity and mastery of Russell's performance, but also a vivid, fierce and visceral family drama, highlighted by a complex, detailed and delicate treasure of a performance by Martin Short. Captain Ron is the art of filmmaking's piece de resistance. The craft, skill, talent and passion on display in Captain Ron is so exquisite that it transcends being just a film and becomes a showpiece of that which humanity is capable. It is impossible to watch Captain Ron and not be changed. The film alters your perception of humanity, of family, of yourself. Captain Ron is not just an artistic masterpiece, it is a spiritual one, bringing to the viewer a transcendent insight of religious proportions. The perfection of Captain Ron is a sign of mankind's continued evolution and a symbol of hope for the future of our species and our planet. Captain Ron is not just a film, and not just a character, Captain Ron is us…sometimes the best of us, sometimes the worst of us…but undeniably he is ALL of us.

 

There you have it, the top five films of all time. I hope you enjoyed the list. Although, as is universally acknowledged, my list is the only list that matters, you should please feel free to add your own list and opinions in the comments section. God Bless Us Everyone. And have a safe and enjoyable April Fools Day.