Today I’m going to share with you some of my opinion about the film “Leave the World Behind” and what were the answers I found when I studied our fascination with the apocalypse. This research began at the beginning of March, when the debate about the possibility of the solar storm damaging satellites and leaving humanity disconnected, without internet, invaded my screens. Warning, contains spoilers and insights.
The narrative of the film, directed by Sam Esmail, follows Amanda Sandford, played by Julia Roberts, one of the few actresses who, in my opinion, could play this role. This is because Amanda is a difficult, complex character and, as the film makes clear from the first scene, bitter towards the world. For me, Roberts has plenty of charisma to make up for what the character lacks and keep us interested in following his drama.
Tired of life, Amanda decides to travel with her family and organizes everything without even consulting her husband, Clay, the character played by Ethan Hawke. All through the website “Leave the world behind”, the namesake of the film’s title in the original language. During the car trip to the beach town where they rented a house, we follow the Sandford family interacting with various technological devices: Amanda gives instructions to a co-worker over the phone; Clay drives and operates the car radio; The eldest son, Archie, listens to music on his headphones and the youngest daughter, Rose, watches an episode of the series Friends.
In my opinion, this scene portrays the way in which contemporary technology is intensely inserted into family life and helps create contrast and tension when, a few scenes later, communications are cut off. Rose and Archie are the ones who apparently suffer most from the lack of communication at this initial moment. Illustrating the idea of how dependent younger generations are on online life.
Despite being worried about the lack of communication, it is only when two strangers show up at her door one night that Amanda becomes visibly uncomfortable. His attempt to leave the world behind is thwarted when agents from the world arrive at his home. The construction of the film leads viewers to spend a good part of the film questioning whether the strangers are telling the truth or not, after all we are only introduced to them later, while we follow Amanda and Clay from the beginning. Little by little we realize that Clay is already comfortable and seems to trust that the strangers are who they say they are: the owners of the house. It is Amanda who resists and this raises questions, why does she still have doubts? This question opens up a series of interpretative possibilities, some explored in the episode of the podcast A Psique Em Palavras that addresses this film. But none of these possibilities fit the focus of this text, so they will not be discussed here.
The communications failure is presented to the characters as a terrorist cyber attack. And that's it at first. Just it. A series of misadventures takes place on screen, but the threat remains only in the field of misinformation and lack of communication and internet access. This can be understood as a criticism of the moment we are living in, due to the large amount of information we are bombarded with daily, we no longer know what is true or not. And when we most need to trust each other, the most we distrust. But this is also a topic for us to explore at another time.
The focus is on how the news about the remote possibility of the solar storm damaging satellites and taking the world offline triggered something of a frenzy. Could this be an exposure of our dependence on life on artificial networks? Or is it the phenomenon called fomo, fear of missing out? Would it be the fear of experiencing the scenario of Leave the World Behind? Is the intensity of the reactions in order or is it an exaggeration on our part? Thus denouncing our fascination with apocalyptic themes?
The psychological reasons that may be behind this fascination led me to Edward Edinger, a renowned Jungian analyst who, shortly before his death in 1998, approved the publication of his book “Archetype of the Apocalypse: Divine revenge, terrorism and the end of the world“. This book was recently published in Brazil by Editora Vozes. In this work, Edinger analyzes what, for him, is the most famous book about the end of the world of all time, The Book of Revelation, also known as the Apocalypse of John.
For Edinger, it is easy to recognize the existence of an archetype of the apocalypse as the driving force behind our fascination with the topic. The author begins the first chapter by explaining that archetype is a pattern and a dynamic agency simultaneously. This implies that, as a pattern we can recognize it objectively and talk about it, but as a dynamic agency we find it as a subject, as if it were an entity, with intentionality and apparent consciousness (p.2).
In the first pages, the author explains, objectively, what he believes to be the psychological meaning of the apocalypse: “it means the memorable event of the coming of the self to conscious realization”.
For those who are not familiar with the concepts of Analytical Psychology, here is a quick and simplistic explanation: for Carl G. Jung the center of consciousness is called the ego, the self complex. However, for him, consciousness is not limited to the ego, let alone the psyche in its entirety! The self is the archetype of totality, at the same time the center and the psychic circumference. As Heráclito Pinheiro said, it is simultaneously an empirical concept and a postulate. The existence of a living and active reality in me!
I must caution the reader that if you wish to truly understand these concepts, study them at the source. In the book "Aion study on the symbolism of the self“, Carl G. Jung explains very well about the phenomena he called Ego and Self. If you still don't feel prepared to venture to the source, I recommend the excellent presentation of Analytical Psychology developed by the historian and Jungian analyst Heráclito Pinheiro in his book: Jungian Psychology: an introduction.
Let's get back to our subject! In the book The archetype of the apocalypse, Edinger says that “images of the apocalypse for the individual spell disaster only if the ego is alienated and antagonistic toward the realities that the self is bringing into consciousness. It is then that the archetype of the apocalypse must manifest itself catastrophically. But if the ego is open and cooperates with the coming of the self, the same images can mean, as Jung says, an 'enlargement of man to the total man'.
In other words, we are fascinated by the topic because we long for revelation, the renewal of life. But we feel like a catastrophic event because we are not open to cooperating with the imminent transformation. How many of us say we want to experience transformations, we want change in the new year, and yet we resist hard when the universe throws open the doors of revolution?
Do we spend years complaining about a job or a meaningless relationship, but still, when we lose them, we try in every way to cling to the old, to what was already worn out, to avoid coming into contact with the unknown?
Could the plot of the films be a message for us as a society? About how much we are eager for change but at the same time reluctant to change? Just as the film provided an open ending for us to reflect on the questions presented there, I end my text with this question so that each of us reflects on how we are receiving in our hearts the metamorphoses that life presents to us.
Here are the books mentioned with the link so you can buy them:
- Archetype of the Apocalypse: Divine revenge, terrorism and the end of the world – Edward Edinger
- Aion study on the symbolism of the self – Carl G. Jung
- Psicologia Junguiana: uma introdução. – Heráclito Pinheiro
You can also listen to my podcast Psyche in Words, where I explored this topic together with some guests:
