In December, like many people, I watched the movie Leave the World Behind. This thriller on Netflix was bankrolled by the Obama's. I thought it was entertaining and relevant to the kinds of feelings I've been having as a quiet observer of our chaotic world. I also enjoyed the ways in which it sought to turn things upside down with regard to what you might normally expect to see in a movie. For example, in Leave the World Behind, the "well-to-do" people are black. It is their Airbnb that gets rented by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke. This immediately sets up a lot of tension as the Julia Roberts character immediately questions this fact when she meets the owners in person (the Scotts) who are played by Mahershala Ali and Myh'la Herrold. And it takes quite a lot to get her to accept the truth that yeah...black people actually do own this multimillion-dollar house that they rented for a weekend.
There are many surprising and tension-building moments in the movie Leave the World Behind that held my attention. But one of the more profound things that occurred was in a line delivered by Julia Roberts about halfway through the film. In the role of Amanda Sandford, she says this to Ruth Scott:
"Every day, all day, my job...my whole job is to...understand people well enough so that I know how to lie to them, so I can sell them things they don't really want. And when you study people like that when you really see the way they treat each other, well...You're no dummy. You see what they do, and they do it without even thinking about it. Fuck. I did it to you and your dad, and I don't even really know why. We fuck each other over all the time, without even realizing it. We fuck every living thing on this planet over and think it'll be fine because we use paper straws and order the free-range chicken. And the sick thing is, I think deep down we know we're not fooling anyone. I think we know we're living a lie. An agreed-upon mass delusion to help us ignore and keep ignoring how awful we really are."
There's a lot packed into that one comment. But it nevertheless captures everything that I've been feeling about the way I've noticed people around me living their lives. And the ending was kind of perfect. One of the characters, a little girl named Rose (played by an 18-year-old actress who has an autoimmune disease and thus looks like twelve), leaves the world behind (the title of the movie) by escaping/detaching from reality to find out what happened to Ross and Rachel in the series finale of Friends. Think of it as a digital pacifier as she doesn't really want to care about what's going on in the world or that her family is (probably) dying of radiation poisoning. Maybe she's the only one that truly "got it" about what it takes to live in modern times. That's (at least) the theory I got after the swift turn in health experienced by her brother in the movie.
Also there's a second quote...it's one from Alan Moore (I believe) that appears in the movie, and it says this:"The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Illuminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening: nobody is in control. The world is rudderless."
This was a quote that gave me pause to think. In my opinion, the writers of the movie hit the nail on the head and that this is also totally true. In some ways, it could explain why there are so many people in America today embracing authoritarianism as opposed to democracy. I think (on many levels) a lot of people want to put someone in control, to give themselves a stronger illusion to cling to in a world that has become increasingly scary and strange to them. This is a world they don't recognize anymore, where people look different than what they remember, where goods cost a ton of money, where people are becoming bolder at price gouging, and where violence has become institutionalized. It's a world where people are always on the verge of being obsolete, and a world where tons of people are just "checking out" and choosing not to engage in work at all because it seems pointless (google "why work if I can't ever afford anything?"). It's a strange place to be, and this quote from the movie seems particularly timely.
In some ways, the movie Leave the World Behind also seems like a good jumping off point to A24's Civil War movie that comes out in a few months (in a big election year). The trailer for that movie starts out by saying "The third term president has declared..." implying in a big way that (at this point) the Constitution has been put through a paper shredder and that might is now right. It echoes a lot of feelings people are having regarding Trump and his strong fascist/ authoritarian views. Of course, I plan on seeing Civil War, which looks like a horrifying docudrama at this point rather than a movie. Staring into the void has become a lifestyle for me. I think that "knowing the truth" is important, even if it is really scary. I don't like being surprised, and being informed is how you avoid surprises.
Anyone else watch Leave the World Behind? If so, what did you think?
I still don't have Netflix so I didn't watch it. I'm not sure I would anyway. Last night I watched "The Holdovers" on Peacock even though it could technically be a "holiday" movie. That was sad without there being an apocalypse. I mean like I wrote in my review, no one really ends up better off, but maybe they are a little wiser for the experience. I think it was a little bit subtler than this movie.
ReplyDeleteI don't have Netflix, but I think I'd skip this one even if I had access. We just have way too many stupid people at the helm. If only we could fix that.
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