December Movies Part 3: Leave the World Behind & Wonka

OK, you want to go out for a movie and then come back and watch another one on Netflix? I have just the two films you seek.

Wonka: Directed by Paul King (who also gave us the whimsical Paddington movies) from a script he wrote with Simon Farnaby, this is an utterly charming confection of a film that imagines the origins of Willy Wonka and his magical Chocolate Factory. Timothee Chalamet stars as Wonka with a supporting cast that is stacked with incredible actors like Olivia Colman, Hugh Grant, Keegan Michael-Key, Rowan Atkinson, and quite a few of the comic troupe from Ghosts. The British folk are putting on their best panto performances, dialing it up to 100 and cackling with evil glee if they are villains, or helping our hero with eager cheer if they are the good guys - or dancing a silly dance and begrudgingly saving the day if they are an Oompa Loompa, like Hugh Grant. 

I had no idea this movie was a musical, so from the opening bars I was hooked by its splendor and silliness and impeccable production design. I also left the theater in dire need of some chocolate. I won't give away any plot because you need to just let the theatrical hiijnks unfold in front of your eyes, but you would have to have a heart of stone to not end up with a big grin on your face. It's a frothy, fun film that is perfect for the holidays and should be added to your watchlist immediately. 

Leave the World Behind: Knowing that this movie was coming out on Netflix, I sought a copy of the novel by Rumaan Alam from my local library and devoured it in a few days. I really enjoyed the novel, but also couldn't quite fathom how someone could turn it into a good movie. Well writer-director Sam Esmail has tried to adapt it, and the result is...middling.

Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke do a fine job playing Clay and Amanda, a couple from Brooklyn who rent a Long Island vacation home with their two younger children, Rose and Archie (Farrah Mackenzie and Charlie Evans). But then as weird things start to happen, the family have to let in George (the wonderful Mahershala Ali) who owns the house, along with his daughter, Ruth (Myha'la). As the film progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that something is very wrong in the world, and we might be on the brink of an apocalypse. Yeah, I know, it's a lot to deal with.

Esmail has a great visual style and there are some jaw dropping set pieces in this movie that are appropriately shocking and creepy and manage to convey the goosebumps that this book gives you as you read it because everything starts out so ordinarily but then devolves in utterly incomprehensible ways. However, I really did not appreciate the major change he made from the book, i.e. turning the character Ruth into George's daughter, instead of his wife. In the book, the two are an older married Black couple, and they have an interesting dynamic with Amanda and Clay who are liberal white folk. Instead, by turning Ruth into George's daughter, Esmail unnecessarily sexualizes the character, making her an object of lust for the teenage son, Archie. It is nice to have a young Black woman who doesn't mind calling Amanda out directly on her racist bullshit, but you could have just as easily done that with an older woman. Also, Amanda is written as a complete misanthrope, while in the book she's just a career woman trying to take a break and get some quality family time. Esmail did such a great job writing the male characters (Hawke is particularly excellent at conveying Clay's abject uselessness in this state of affairs) but then, like too many male directors are wont to do, he reduced the women to absolute caricatures.

I certainly did not hate this movie, and if you're the type of person who can't be bothered to read, you will probably still get a good sense of what the novel was like if you watch this film. Despite all my quibbles about Esmail's script, I was charmed by the final scene of the movie, for very particular reasons. To me it did end up capturing the essence of the novel (be warned, it's an ambiguous ending), and was an audacious way to end after all the creeping dread of the preceding two hours.