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Leave the World Behind: Barack Obama’s Unintentionally Optimistic Disaster Movie
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Note: There will be mega-spoilers in this article. A lot of the critical messaging of Leave the World Behind comes at the end, and requires me to give away the ending.
I first heard about Leave the World Behind on Twitter/X. The tweet informed me that it was a new Netflix movie made by Barak Obama’s production company, High Ground Productions; had something to do with the end of the world, when technology stops working; and had some anti-white overtones about white people not being trustable. I decided to watch based on that tweet. I didn’t watch any trailers or read any reviews; I believe a movie is best enjoyed if you go in knowing as little about it as possible.
Surprisingly, the movie was not as anti-white as I expected. It’s there, but it at least takes a novel approach to it. Its director, Sam Esmail, is from an Egyptian Muslim family. Rumaan Alam, who wrote the novel the film is based on, is a gay Bangladeshi who went to Oberlin and adopted two black children with his husband. There were no blacks or Jews in the creative process, however, so although some familiar anti-white tropes are there, Leave the World Behind brings a more outsider perspective to black-white relations than the usual Jewish or Kangz fare.
In the end, it says some interesting things, some of which I like a lot. And while the film is supposed to be a horrifying portrait of civilizational collapse, I, as a White Nationalist, saw the ending quite optimistically. It is a movie that speaks to liberal fears, and I actually loved it for all the wrong reasons.
The movie begins in a Brooklyn bedroom, where a husband and wife are preparing to go on vacation. The husband is Clay Sanford, played by Ethan Hawk. He’s a college professor and spends most of the movie wearing a t-shirt belonging to the indie band Bikini Kill, suggesting that he is a grown-up hipster. His wife is Amanda Sanford, played by Julia Roberts. She works in corporate advertising and is a raging misanthrope. She has rented a fancy house for the weekend in a sparsely-populated part of Long Island because “she fucking hates people” and wants to go somewhere away from them.
I have always hated Julia Roberts, but I found her easier to watch in this movie because her character is supposed to be unlikable. She tells you in the opening scene that she hates people, which adds a layer of ambiguity later on, when the Sanfords meet the black characters, as she is bitchy toward them. You’re unsure if she is doing it because she is a racist or as a result of her general misanthropy. She and her husband set off for Long Island with their two kids: Archie, who appears to be in his late teens, and Rose, who is said to be 13.
While the Sanfords are driving to Long Island, America suddenly comes under a massive cyberattack. Slowly but very surely, all Internet and satellite service starts to fail. The first sign we see of this is when Rose’s iPad goes down right before she is about to watch the last episode of her favorite TV show, Friends. Rose’s frustration over this becomes a running theme throughout the movie. As all hell starts breaking loose, everyone starts panicking in the belief that the world is coming to an end, but Rose’s only complaint is her inability to watch the last episode of Friends. As the movie progresses, it becomes increasingly apparent that Rose’s obsession with Friends has deep symbolic meaning. The viewer gets a big hint about this when sassy black zoomer Ruth Scott, who we meet later, remarks that while it is not a bad show, “It is nostalgia for a world that never existed.”
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I will give Leave the World Behind some credit. For a liberal movie, it is remarkably subtle in its messaging. Ruth doesn’t elaborate on what she means by “a world that never existed,” but presumably she means that the world was never as white as it appears in the show. I respect the movie for respecting my intelligence enough not to spell that out.
We find out later in the movie that Rose has also watched the entire series West Wing, much to her mother’s surprise. Thus, Rose is not just obsessed with Friends, but with 1990s pop culture in general.
I once wrote an article on ‘90s nostalgia and noted that a lot of the appeal of the pop culture of that time is that a series or movie with an all-white cast was still non-controversial then. It still presents a world that was normatively white. You might have a token minority character here and there, but it was not the multicultural free-for-all it is now. While those who enjoy it might not even be consciously aware of it, a lot of the appeal of ‘90s nostalgia is a desire to escape the multicultural hellscape of the present day and find comfort in a white world. Rose, a young girl who has lived her entire life in 31% white New York City and has never known a normatively white world, is nonetheless drawn to it.
The Sanfords get to their destination on Long Island, and the first thing they do is go to the beach. Once there, the see an oil tanker off in the distance that gets closer and closer. The tanker eventually crashes into the beach. After the feds arrive on the scene, it is revealed that several other such incidents have occurred as a result of the cyberattack detroying GPS.
When they get back to the vacation house they are renting, they find that the Internet is out, their phones are no longer working, and even the television goes down. Archie and Rose go outside to their swimming pool, where Rose notices some deer approaching the house. Then, dozens of deer surround the house. Rose becomes fascinated by the deer and spends a lot of their vacation staring out into the woods behind the house, looking for them.
At first the deer thing kind of threw me off. Why would a cyberattack make the animals start behaving differently? But it later becomes clear that the deer are actually a metaphor for white supremacy. As society collapses, the specter of white supremacy starts rearing its beautiful head. I’ll explain the connection later, but for now, know that just as Rose is drawn to the white world of ‘90s pop culture, she is also fascinated by the deer, which symbolize white supremacy. Stay with me. It will all make sense in the end.
That night, after their kids have gone to bed, Clay and Amanda are talking when there is a knock on the door. They open it to find an older black man in a tuxedo and his daughter in fancy eveningwear. The man introduces himself as George Scott, the owner of the house. It’s actually his second house, as his primary residence is in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. He has just come back from a concert by the Bronx Philharmonic, of which he is a board member. Because the elevator at his apartment building has gone out and he is unable to climb the stairs due to a knee injury, he asks permission from the Sandfords to crash at the house he has rented to them. There is an in-law suite in the basement where they can stay which will allow them to stay out of the Sanfords’ way. He offers a partial refund in cash for the imposition. George’s daughter, Ruth, is annoyed that her dad feels the need to ask permission from white people to stay in his own home.
The laid-back Clay is agreeable, but Amanda is unhappy given that they have paid for the week and she is skeptical of their story. An African-American multimillionaire who likes classical music and is married to his daughter’s biological mother? And this movie wants to preach to me about “worlds that never existed” . . .
Eventually, Amanda begrudging acquiesces. The black Scotts and the white Sanfords are now living under the same roof as society begins to fall apart.
The next day, both Clay and George both go out to see if they can get some information on what is going on. Clay ends up getting lost. On his way he sees a fat, hysterical Hispanic woman on the side of the road. He stops and tries to talk to her, but the woman doesn’t speak any English. She needs help, but because he doesn’t understand what she is saying, he eventually drives off, leaving her where she is.
George, for his part, goes to a neighbor’s house belonging to a family named Thorne and finds the place in a mess. While there he finds wreckage from a recent plane crash and then watches another plane crash to the ground, presumably due to the failure of GPS. George’s wife, who he says is an art dealer, was due to fly home from Morocco that day, so the crash causes him to worry that she may have died on the plane home.
Archie and Rose explore the woods behind the house and find a woodshed that shows signs of someone living there. The shed has a window with a view of the room Rose is staying in. The significance of this is not explained, or maybe I’m too dumb to understand its meaning. While out in the woods, Archie also gets bitten by a tick. This becomes a plot device later.
When everyone gets back to the house, the Sanfords try to leave in order to join Amanda’s sisters in New Jersey. As their car pulls off, Ruth, who does not trust white people, says to her father, “This is for the better.” George responds, “For who?” Ruth, appalled that he would even ask the question, answers “For us!” Alas, as the Sanfords attempt the drive, they find the roads clogged by self-driving Tesla cars — which have deliberately shut them down. The Sanfords have to return to the Scott house.
Trust between the blacks and whites is a major theme. When the black Scotts first show up, Amanda doesn’t trust them. Ruth Scott, in turn, does not trust white people. As she elaborates in a conversation with her father that evening:
Ruth: It’s just us now, isn’t it?
George: What do you mean by that?
Ruth: What I mean is if shit goes down, do you trust these people who are in our house? We already know that the wife has no chill, that boy was sneaking pictures of me by the pool, that little girl keeps staring into the woods like Donnie Darko, and I’m pretty sure the husband wants to fuck me.
George: How do you know that?
Ruth: He’s not asking to do anything. He’s not that guy, but did he want to? Abso-fucking-lutely. My point remains: I don’t trust them.
Indeed, both the blacks and whites are keeping secrets from each other. The Sanfords don’t tell the Scotts about the oil tanker incident. Worse, George Scott hides his real reason for coming to the house — but eventually comes clean. It turns out he is a bigshot financial planner and stock-market wizard. One of his clients is a major figure in the military-industrial complex and is awash in Department of Defense money. Shortly before the cyberattack, the military guy called George and asked him to move around vast sums of money. Usually a happy-go-lucky sort, he then told George to “take care of [himself]” in a tone that set off alarm bells in George’s head. He sensed that something big was going down, and decided to get out of the city.
That night Archie starts to get sick, and in the morning, he’s coughing up blood. Weirder still, his teeth start falling out. George theorizes that it is because of the tick bite. Even more alarming is that Rose suddenly goes missing. It is agreed that Amanda and Ruth will explore the woods outside to see if they can find Rose while George and Clay take Archie to George’s contractor friend Danny to see if he can get Archie some medicine.
And here, my friends, is where the movie starts to drive its point home — and it’s actually pretty cool.
We saw George’s contractor friend Danny (Kevin Bacon) earlier in the movie, albeit very briefly. After arriving on Long Island, Amanda goes to the store for groceries. While there she sees Danny loading bottled water and canned goods into his car. See, he’s a Right-wing MAGA/QAnon type and a prepper. While George was tipped off about the impending cyberattack by his military friend, Danny knew it was coming because he is plugged into the conspiracy-theory community.
George and Clay get to Danny’s house and knock on the door. The first thing Danny does is to tell them to get off his porch. Once they do, Danny comes out with a shotgun and treats George coldly, refusing his request for help. George is taken aback, as he has been friends with Danny for years, but Danny is now treating him like a total stranger. Danny tells him that with society collapsing, they are now in a new paradigm and his only concern now is protecting his own. Clay offers to give Danny the $1,000 cash refund Geroge had given him earlier, but Danny refuses, saying that if the government collapses, the money will be useless.
Tensions escalate and George finally pulls a gun on Danny, demanding that he give them the medicine Archie needs. For a while there is a Mexican standoff, but before either man can shoot, Clay jumps in between the two men and desperately pleads for help from Danny, rather pathetically. Surprisingly, Danny agrees.
Before they go, Danny theorizes that Archie’s teeth falling out is not a result of the tick bite but due to a microwave weapon attack, which also explains the loud screeching noise they keep hearing. He notes that a similar thing happened in Cuba. This is a reference to the Havana Syndrome, a much-discussed topic in conspiracy-theory communities. If they are correct, it would confirm their worst fears that what is happening is the result of a coordinated attack by foreign state actors. It is suggested that the perpetrators are an alliance of Russia, China, and North Korea. Danny advises them to go to the Thorne residence and seek shelter in the nuclear bunker they had installed there.
When George and Clay get back to the car, George says, “Before we go, I need to know that you’re on the level with me. No matter how far this thing goes, I need to know that we’re good, because what just happened here is happening everywhere.”
What’s George talking about? See, George and Clay just went to Danny’s house to get help. Danny would not grant the request from George, a black guy with whom he had been friends for years, but Danny would grant the request from Clay, a white guy who Danny had never met before. The implication is that as society collapses, people will become tribal and that white solidarity will start kicking in. Danny, who was a working-class grunt in the old world, will become the new royalty in the Mad Max America to come. As a contractor, Danny has skills that will valuable in the new paradigm. He can build things. George was royalty under the old regime, but in the new one, he is just another black man. George is now afraid that Clay will eventually abandon his egalitarian principles and betray him for the white Dannys of the world.
The following exchange ensues:
George: I had a sneaking suspicion, but I wanted more information first. All the signs were there, sure, but I didn’t want to scare anyone. You would have called me crazy, because it is crazy. It would make more sense if we were on the brink of an all-out invasion. But this? I didn’t think we would let something like this happen. I thought we were smarter than that.
Clay: Let what happen?
George: Because my primary client works in the defense sector, I spent a lot of time studying the cost/benefit analysis of military campaigns. There was one program in particular that terrified my client the most: a simple three-stage maneuver that could topple a country’s government from within. First stage was isolation: disable their communications and transportation. Make the target as deaf, dumb, and paralyzed as possible. Set them up for the second stage: synchronized chaos. Terrorize them with covert attacks and misinformation overwhelming their defense capabilities, leaving the weapons systems vulnerable to extremists in their own military. Without a clear enemy or motive, people will start turning on each other. Done successfully, the third stage would happen on its own.
Clay: What’s the third stage?
George: Coup d’etat. Civil war. Collapse. This program was considered the most cost-effective way to destabilize a country, because if the target nation was dysfunctional enough, it would in essence do the work for you. Whoever started this wants us to finish it.
Again, I admire the subtlety of the messaging here. The movie could say what it is trying to say in a much more heavy-handed way, but chooses not to spell it out. So let me spell it out for you: As society collapses, racial tribalism will start kicking in. We have already seen this with Danny and Clay. We also saw it earlier in the film, when Clay refused to help the desperate Hispanic lady and left her to her fate on the side of the road. When George talks about civil war and coups d’etat, the implication is that this “civil war” will be a race war and the “coup d’etat” will be white people taking the country back and reinstating white supremacy. After annoying me for two hours, my opinion of this movie began to rise dramatically.
The movie then cuts to Amanda and Ruth searching for Rose in the woods. Amanda does not trust blacks and Ruth does not trust whites, and they most especially do not like each other. But when they find the wood shack, they go inside, talk, and have a “maybe we’re not so different after all” moment. As they’re leaving the shack, Amanda sees bicycle tracks on the ground. It must be Rose! She follows the tracks for a time, but then looks back and sees Ruth surrounded by dozens of deer that are approaching her menacingly. Ruth is scared to death. Amanda runs back, stands in front of Ruth, and starts yelling at the deer. The deer are taken aback and stop their advance. Ruth starts yelling at them as well, and then the deer run away.
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This is why I say that the deer are a metaphor for white supremacy. They act menacingly towards black Ruth, but seem to have no hostile intentions towards white Amanda. When Amanda gets in front of Ruth, the deer stop. When they both yell at the deer, they run away — meaning that if blacks and whites stand up to white supremacy together, they can drive it away.
The last scene shows Rose inside the Thorne residence. She has broken in and is eating some junk food that she found inside. She also finds the door to the bomb shelter. She enters it, flips a switch, and the lights go on, revealing a state-of-the-art bomb shelter and command center. It’s got beds, a kitchen, a big-screen TV, and all sorts of other amenities. A computer informs her that radiation is rising in some cities, suggesting that nukes are going off. It also says that troops are surrounding the White House, meaning the coup d’etat is already underway.
Rose explores the bomb shelter and opens a cabinet which reveals a massive collection of DVDs, including many 1990s TV shows. She finds the DVD for the final season of Friends and starts watching the final episode. Then the movie ends.
Earlier, Ruth describes Friends as “nostalgia for a world that never existed.” But with society having collapsed and a race war imminent, the ultra-white world of ‘90s pop culture may now in fact become a reality. You, the viewer, are supposed to be horrified by that prospect — but for Rose, who has a deep love of whiteness, it will be like a dream come true.
I endorse this movie.
PS: No money was given to Netflix in the writing of this review.
