Leave the World Behind
I watched the latest Obama produced movie, Leave the World Behind, the other day. Directed by Sam Esmail and starring Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke and Mahershala Ali. Described as an apocalyptic psychological thriller based on the novel by Rumaan Alam.
IMDB.com
It starts when the well to do family arriving at their remote (Air)BnB find that there has been a power outage and all their devices are out of commission. To make matters worse the home owners return home and the families co-exist in a relationship that is rooted initially in paranoia.
We can all relate to this sense of paranoia whether we've been scammed or not.
Lacking their communication devices nobody has any idea what’s going on. It was obvious to me this was a supposed cyber attack. They’ve been warning about them in the press enough. As usual in American movies the characters opine ‘who would want to do this to us?’ on contemplating this as an attack by foreign actors.
film still Yahoo.com
Indeed, even the “prepper”, (played by Kevin Bacon) whose conspiracy credentials are therefore in good order, doesn’t present us with the possibility that a false flag attack is under way. Living in a rich enclave where he does though, rather undermines his position making him into a character.
Still there are the mysterious leaflets “Death to America” being dropped in various foreign languages.
As a movie it is quite enjoyable way to spend some time and deserves it’s IMDB rating of 6.4. The scene where all the electric vehicles go out of control is entertaining and point to a world without human action and AI pitfalls. You can see that this element is central to the film.
It is also worth watching for the window into the thoughts and beliefs of the ruling elite, at least that represented by the Obama/Kissinger/Rockefeller wing. Arguably the cultural expression of a significant section of the elite nonetheless.
Firstly, apocalyptic. They view the world as under grave threat. This threat comes internally from racists. The rich homeowners are black and the tensions between them stem from potential racism from the mother with her difficulty accepting they are the home owners. Plus the black daughters assumption that they are racist. A theme of the film is that they have to come together to work out what is going on, especially as the large detached house seems to be miles from anywhere.
The threat obviously comes from external forces too. There is no indication that the US has done anything wrong. Isn’t that how the elite like to portray themselves as the upholders of values. What foreign policy Americans do know is that their country uses the biggest military in the world to uphold democracy. We know Obama started five wars under his presidency to promote democracy. This film doesn’t touch of any of that. How convenient for Barack.
Secondly, there is the viewpoint on human nature itself. This is bound up with the climate.
Finally, the film represents a clear ideological formation of the idea that it’s all just chaos and nobody is in charge. Nobody actually runs the world – there is no dark cabal – there’s no place for paranoia or conspiracy theories. These are major problems of our day. However, near the end of the movie the character GH Scott suggests in his silence that maybe this isn’t true. That there is a dark cabal. That this is planned civil war/foreign invasion/false flag.
Food for thought in our current times.
