Leave the World Behind opens with several shots from space, tracking the sun as it crawls across the sky over the Upper Bay, and many of its chapters start by zooming back out to space as well. At first, the motif hammers in the idea that this is all happening on a random Tuesday morning, that the events of the film are society snapping under the tension of the everyday, and it becomes something more sinister as it zooms further out.
This reading is complemented by the first moments. The first thing that happens in the film, arguably its real inciting incident, is Amanda Sanford (Julia Roberts, who also produces) packing up for herself and her entire family and leaving. She’s had enough, she is snapping, and everything else in the world is snapping after her.
Brooklyn- Sales executive Amanda Sanford whisks her family, husband Clay and children Rose and Archie (Ethan Hawke, Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans), away on a surprise vacation to the Hamptons. Suddenly, a black man claiming to be G.H. Scott (Mahershala Ali), the owner of their short-term rental house, appears, along with his daughter, Ruth (Myha’la), telling the Sanfords of a blackout in the city and asking to stay the night, and they realize all smart devices in their houses and cars aren’t working. Tensions mount between the two families in the isolated modern mansion as society appears to collapse completely in the background.
Continue reading
Reel Entropy 