"Leave the World Behind"

     ☆☆☆☆ 

A late-summer weekend getaway to Long Island becomes a nightmare of existentialist dread in the film adaptation of Leave the World Behind, a sometimes dazzling, sometimes frustrating film that largely eschews politics for tension, despite the presence of Barack and Michelle Obama as executive producers.

It's based on an equally dazzling, equally frustrating novel by Rumaan Alam, which by alarming coincidence was released during the height of the COVID pandemic, when even the most calm and rational of people couldn't help but be sucked in to conspiracy theories, ideological warfare, and often-justified paranoia. Three years removed from the darkest of those days, it's easy to forget just how hopeless, anxious and distraught the world felt, but no matter—Leave the World Behind is here to help those feelings zoom right back into the front of your mind.

Both the novel and the film are the story of a well-off White family from Brooklyn—mother, father, teenage son and daughter—who rent a lavish house on Long Island for a much-needed getaway. Just after they arrive, mysterious things begin to happen, not the least of which is a massive oil tanker running aground on a relaxing beach. Then comes a knock at the door in the middle of the night, heralding the arrival of a Black man who, accompanied by his daughter, claims to be the home's owner.

Initial tensions give way to a growing sense of uneasiness as the world seems to start collapsing around them, and part of the enjoyment of the film—if that's quite the right word, since it's disquieting and intense—comes from never quite knowing exactly what's going to happen next, or why, so there will be no major spoilers here.

The husband and wife, Clay and Amanda, are played by Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, who is given the thankless task of reciting some of the most stilted expository dialogue in recent memory during the film's awkward opening scenes. Leave the World Behind does not get off to a great start, though an endlessly roving, twisting, careening camera (courtesy of cinematography Tod Campbell and a laundry list of visual effects companies) helps to disorient viewers and serve notice that the film never intends to find a center of balance. It's a queasy movie, both because of that ever-moving camera and because of the uncertainty of the story.

Mahershala Ali plays G.H., the wealthy homeowner, who seems to be harboring a fair number of secrets when he shows up to the house with his daughter Ruth (Myha'la), but the screenplay by director Sam Esmail copies the same core problem of the book by introducing tensions of both race and class and then never following through. Incomprehensibly, the movie changes Ruth from G.H.'s wife to his daughter, undermining the tension between two married couples that permeates the often florid prose of the book.

Yet, as things get stranger and stranger, and the world goes off the rails as its consumed by some horrendous conflict, Leave the World Behind offers some top-notch filmmaking, including a central sequence that serves as its own master class in parallel cutting as each of the main characters discovers a small, puzzling, disquieting piece of the overall puzzle.

In tiny little snippets, the characters begin to work out some—but not even close to enough—of what's happening. All along, the movie stays sharply focused on the six people in the house, with only small and supremely uncomfortable moments in which they manage to encounter others. For the most part, though, these characters face the dawning realization that they are soon to be all they have.

By design, very little is given an explanation, though the filmmakers aren't quite as bold as the novelist, and in the end succumb to spelling out the backstory perhaps a bit too pointedly. If the film is largely designed to confuse, disorient and disturb its audience, it ultimately can't resist the temptation to provide concrete details about the central events. Still other key moments, like the sudden appearance of hundreds of deer or the delightfully weird moment in which self-driving cars pile up on the road, are allowed to remain mysterious, and they're better for it.

Leave the World Behind may feel too obtuse to some viewers, too languid for others, and maybe even too on-the-nose disturbing for a few. Stick with it, though (ideally in a movie theater; it plays on the big screen for a few weeks before its debut on a certain major streaming service), and it and its disturbing strangeness will probably stick with you.

Viewed October 25, 2023 — TCL Chinese Theater

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