Analyzing Leave the World Behind (2023)

I am a huge fan of Stanley Kubrick, but other than my article on Eyes Wide Shut, I haven’t really done a review and analysis on his many other great movies. Though I did also talk about Being There (which ties in with 2001: A Space Odyssey) but strictly speaking it’s not a Kubrick movie itself.

So I really haven’t done a lot of Kubrick and that’s because there is just SO much stuff in there to analyze that once I would really get started with systematically analyzing his movies, I would never get finished.

Leave the World Behind is SOMEWHAT similar to Kubrick movies - but only in that sense. Though it’s actually MUCH LESS complex, so I feel I can try to tackle it. It’s also not nearly as entertaining to watch, but just like Kubrick’s movies it has (at least) 3 layers. The surface narrative taken at face value and (at least) 2 hidden narratives.

In the case of Kubrick, the first hidden narrative usually has occult, esoteric and transhumanist connotations and is affirming the “elite” (for lack of a better word) and their world view so to say. But his 3rd narrative always reverses that and makes fun of his second narrative and anyone who is into these occult and esoteric things and pisses all over them (pardon my French, but that’s the best way to describe it).

That’s just to give you the rough idea and my frame of reference. Because in Leave the World Behind it’s kinda like that, but also totally not. It also has (at least) 2 hidden narratives and one of them is occult and esoteric, but it’s missing the one that turns it around and criticizes its own occult and esoteric elements. Instead it ads a hidden narrative with socialist elements - to be more precise these socialist elements are a radical interpretation of CRT and an even more radical interpretation of eco-socialism.

Though reviewing the movie critically is extremely easy, because it’s not a good movie from an audience’s or critic’s perspective. It’s super slow moving, boring and tedious to watch (and NOT in a “good” way like with Kubrick movies). There is (intentionally) no character development at all and the characters are all equally unlikable and stay that way.

I can’t emphasize enough that this is REALLY NOT an entertaining movie - it’s a pain to watch. This movie HATES its characters AND its audience and so there was never the intention to make an entertaining movie that audiences would like. That’s not at all what this movie is about.

Instead this movie is about precisely that disdain not just for its own characters and audience, but the makers of this movie really have an extremely deep disdain for humanity as a whole and for the United States in particular and they make that VERY clear and that’s the whole point. (The fact that a former head of the United States produced this movie makes this all the more scary -you know you are screwed when even the head of your country hates your country).

It starts with the title itself. They might as well have called this movie “Screw you all”. Because “Leave the World Behind” seems like a command or at least a recommendation. As in: It’s okay to give up on the entire world cause the entire world is populated by all kinds of horrible people and would be better off without them. I am already writing so much about this movie, when in reality that one sentence just now sums it up perfectly.

This movie is actually extremely smart. Because it very much intentionally is different things for different people. It’s kinda like a Rorschach test where everyone sees what they already believe and then it reinforces those believes. Now, in light of the surface story, that makes perfect sense. Because the surface story is about humanity and especially the U.S. being comprised of a bunch of unlikable self-absorbed A-holes with a history of systemic racism and oppression who finally get what’s coming to them. And even as the apocalypse engulfs them, they don’t even really care, because all they care about is themselves and their petty little conflicts and divisions and mundane distractions and as long as those continue to be provided, they won’t even really notice or even care about the world ending around them.

In any case, I think it’s pretty clear how much the people making this movie hate other people and hate America with them even having a rather low opinion of humanity as a whole to the point that they think that the earth would be better off without most of the people here. BTW, that’s what the deer represent. They realize that humanity is done for, so they come close to the places where humans will soon HAVE ONCE LIVED so as to reclaim them.

I already mentioned that there are a lot of themes and symbolism relating to Critical Race Theory and Eco-Socialism. I don’t think I need to explain this as those themes are pretty obvious when you watch the movie. So how do they fit together? Well, simple, white people have taken land from minorities but even humanity as a whole has taken land away from nature and humanity is so bad and racist that it deserves to go bye bye so that the earth can recover and THAT’S what the deer are about. They are just waiting to reclaim what was taken away from them and from nature.

Of course I don’t agree with the message of the movie, I am just explaining it. In my view humanity is part of nature or SHOULD be part of it, but the movie sees us mainly as a threat to nature.

So the extinction of (at least large portions of) mankind that the surface story depicts is seen as a good and desirable thing. So how would you go and bring about this “good and desirable” outcome? Well, as the movie points out, there is already a lot of racism and division and mistrust among people. So you would think they would want to lessen that as the movie makes it clear that that will lead to our destruction. But NOT if you paid attention to the movie, because the movie is basically saying that we are already beyond salvation, so destruction would now not only be inevitable but desirable.

And that’s already about half of the article. As you can probably tell, the rest of the article gets a bit more controversial, so let’s just keep the more crazy tinfoil hat sounding anecdotes behind the paywall.

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