Leave the World Behind: [Media Notes 100]

Leave the World Behind (2023) is an apocalyptic film set on the ultimate landscape, Long Island. We follow

Amanda and Clay Sandford, played by Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke, who bring their children Rose and Archie (Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans) on a beach getaway. Mahershala Ali plays G.H. Scott, the owner of the luxurious home the Sandfords are renting, who comes home with his daughter Ruth (Myha’la) to escape mysterious chaos occurring in the city. The two families are then forced to exist — and survive — under the same roof as increasingly strange and apocalyptic events occur, including plane crashes, herds of deer filing into the backyard and Archie’s teeth mysteriously falling out.

As the world disintegrates – an oil tanker crashes into the beach, an airliner falls from the sky, the deer go crazy, new driverless Teslas zip down the highway into a pile-up, Amanda and G.H. almost wander into adultery – tweenage Rose is obsessed with watching the final episode of Friends – what happens with Ross and Rachel? – which is now impossible because all electronic devices have shut down.

This goes on for one day, then a second. Near the end of the film the camera pans up and looks toward Manhattan where we see large explosions with smoke and debris streaming into the air. Meanwhile Rose has made her way to a nearby mansion and down into an underground bunker stocked with food, electronic devices, and a wall of DVDs. She finds the final episode of Friends, loads it into the DVD player, and watches as the familiar theme song plays. Satisfied.

The End

We never learn what was going on – perhaps it was a coup d'état, but we don’t know – or how things worked out for our two families. We’re simply left there, hanging in mid-air like a cartoon character that’s just walked off the edge of a cliff but hasn’t yet looked down.

And yet that IS a satisfying ending. It took a second or three for me to realize that that’s all I’m going to learn, but once that realization set it, I was cool with it.

How’d that work? Why?