When Clay wakes up, he sleepily watches his wife Amanda pack her bags from under the covers. No, the heroine of the movie Let the world go is not running away from a working union and two teenage children. She did something worse: she planned an unexpected vacation for everyone, which is just starting.
The author of the new film, which can be seen on Netflix, is Sam Esmail. From the American creator of the series Mr. Robot one could assume that his latest venture would be a rather paranoid affair in which modern technology would play a significant role. It is true, but only to a certain extent.
Strange things begin to happen immediately after the family arrives at a seaside house on the outskirts of New York. Resting on the beach is interrupted by a giant tanker that approaches a sandy area strewn with sunbeds and umbrellas. And he won’t stop until the mass of coastal land slows him down. The apocalyptic-looking scene is just a harbinger of things to come.
Meanwhile, 12-year-old Rose is experiencing her own personal disaster of planetary proportions, as the internet and TV signal are down and she can’t finish watching the final episode of Friends. Her sixteen-year-old brother Archie is annoyed on principle, because it belongs to his age.
However, parents Clay and Amanda, played by Ethan Hawke and Julia Roberts, deal with a much more specific problem during their first evening at the luxury mansion. A suspicious African-American couple rings the doorbell, claiming to be the owners of the house, stuck in traffic precisely because of a widespread outage of television, telephone and other signals in the area.
Here, the director and screenwriter Esmail teases the viewer on many fronts with genre hints. The pair of intruders seem cut out of the scheme of the so-called home invasion thrillerůin which one’s household is invaded by strange strangers.
Mahershala Ali jako GH a Julia Roberts v roli Amanda. | Photo: JoJo Whilden
However, the model situation here is the opposite. The two are reportedly returning home – asking if they can stay until the morning before the situation calms down. It doesn’t change the suspicion of the heroes and the audience at first. But it soon turns out that it was just one of a series of tricks that Esmail wants to trick the heroes and the audience.
Let the World Be the World, which was created by adapting the novel also published in the Czech Republic by the American writer Rumaan Alam, is an enormously stylized film full of polished, precisely composed shots, but also woven from the most classic motifs of all kinds of offshoots of the thriller genre. He is also not afraid of references to well-known scenes: for example, an ominous flock of birds that flies in front of the camera in memory of the famous Birds from Alfred Hitchcock.
They are not the only representatives of the fauna that behave unnaturally here. Not far from the pool, where the family sunbathe, roe deer and roe deer show up without any sign of shyness, in ever-increasing numbers. Airplane – in another obvious Hitchcockian reference – powders the path in the middle of the fields with a mysterious red something. When Clay finds out what’s going on, uncertainty about the current events grows.
Unfortunately, Sam Esmail tries so hard to be the grandmaster of suspense that the story begins to fall apart under his hands. He is careful to build tension in individual scenes, but much less concerned with holding the whole together.
When it becomes clear that the mysterious threat probably goes far beyond the surroundings, the film closes in a luxurious mansion, where the characters suddenly deal with acute problems much less and ordinary interpersonal relationships come first. This is where the film begins to seriously stumble. And the more they try to go beyond the genre spectacle and also say something about the state of the world or society, the more problems increase.
Let the world through the world is like a blow with a hammer. It shakes, but does not make a person think more deeply. The photo features Ethan Hawke as Clay and Julia Roberts as Amanda. | Photo: JoJo Whilden
The intention was probably to make a subversive thriller that plays with the expectations of the audience, like, for example, the debut of Uteč! and the subsequent work of director Jordan Peele. But in the end, Sam Esmail comes closer to last year’s satire of today’s society Look at the earth!.
Both films share not only genre games, but also clumsiness and making it appear that they are smarter than they really are. With both, we as viewers have a similar feeling: yes, we may be on the same page as you, but beating our heads with those thoughts is quite counterproductive.
And so the heroes of Let the World Be the World find a moment to debate the topic “capitalism is yuck”, for example at a moment when, according to all logic, Amanda should be searching for her lost daughter, whose fate she was so worried about in the previous scene.
Other times, people encounter a herd of animals for about the fifth time, which only stares at them in silence, which the protagonists need to scientifically comment with the words that the animals may know something more and want to warn us.
Above all, someone should have warned Sam Esmail that there is such a not entirely unnecessary thing in art called subtlety. And that without her, his film will only work like a blow with a hammer, which will momentarily shake the audience, but will not make the audience think about anything.
Sometimes the creators quite humorously turn the offered clichés upside down – for example, with the way the character played by Kevin Bacon is used in the film. In an attempt to capture today’s post-factual era, riddled with mistrust and the impossibility of creating an overall picture of the state of the world, the filmmakers tend to fail in the end.
Let the World Be the World lacks subtlety. | Photo: Netflix
Let the world be the world remains a band of spectacular, sometimes even effective scenes that end with a cutely silly finale. It’s a shame that the conclusion could have been predicted many minutes in advance and it’s just an attempt to elegantly lie out of it to make it either a functional genre mix or a drama that wants to use hyperbole but make a relevant statement about today’s society and international politics.
Sam Esmail presented his directorial art in front of us like in a showcase. Unfortunately, it is not enough for a complete experience.
Film
Let the world be the world
Directed by: Sam Esmail
The film is available on Netflix.
2023-12-13 16:41:34
#vacation #apocalypse #began #Netflix #movie #cute #silly #Currently.cz
