Mark Reviews Movies: THE WORLD TO COME

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 11, 2021

Set amidst the isolation of a New York farm in the 1850s, The World to Come portrays the friendship between women that obviously becomes more. It's not about the physical romance or sex, though, and indeed, the movie doesn't show the couple in bed together until a flashback montage near the very end of the story. The screenplay, written by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, and director Mona Fastvold are attempting to display a far deeper intimacy.

That ambition is admirable, and in the performances of Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby, playing the women whose initial bond is one of relative proximity and convenience but whose relationship almost becomes one of necessity, the movie possesses palpable romantic/sexual tension. More importantly, because the bulk of the physical intimacy of this relationship is displayed through some hesitant and then passionate kisses, the two provide a genuine feeling of that deeper connection between the women, each the wife of a farmer whose capacity for understanding and compassion is limited.

Our emotional reaction to this bond, though, isn't quite as strong. It has nothing to do with the absence of sex until the finale. It has nothing to do with the central performances, which communicate so much of what's left unspoken or unseen through quiet moments, quick glances or long stares, and the evolving tone of the characters' conversations. It's more about the screenwriters' hesitation to really make this story about the women at its core, and it also has to do with Fastvold's approach, which relies mostly on the mood of those silences and looks. One can't entirely blame the director, of course, because she's working only with what the screenplay has provided her.

Abigail (Waterston) and her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck), the sound of whose name gives us a succinct summation of his disposition, live on and tend to a farm outside a small village somewhere in New York. The couple may or may not have ever been happy together. They had a child, a daughter, who died at the age of 5 to diphtheria.

Whatever their marriage once was no longer matters. Now, it is just shared pain, experienced separately, and a rift between the couple. He wants to have another child. She isn't ready yet, and for all Abigail knows, she may never be.

The entire narrative is framed as the story of Abigail's personal journal, since the only written account of her and her husband's life on the farm comes from the ledger and a business journal. At one point, Abigail notes that she recalls her own mother's realization that the only record of her own existence appeared once in Abigail's father's ledger, when the mother purchased a dress. There is so much more to the lives of people living on the land (Abigail can only imagine what it was like for her grandmother, who forged a new frontier in a new country), but ironically, her own story, as we learn later when memories overtake the character's near-constant narration, will be one of key omissions, too.

That's a fascinating idea—that even an attempt to document the personal and inner lives of people will inevitably come up short, either from lack of knowledge or intentional exclusion. It never quite pays off, though, because, for all of the dancing around about the more intimate moments of Abigail's relationship with her neighbor, the actual nature of that bond is more than apparent.

The new neighbor is Tallie (Kirby), whose husband Finney (Christopher Abbott), a zealously religious and cold-hearted man, has rented a rather expensive farm nearby. The two women become fast friends. They talk about their pasts. Abigail reveals the death of her daughter and her uncertainty about having another child. Tallie notes that she fears both the idea of missing out on having a child and the fact of childbirth.

Dyer notices how close his wife becomes with the neighbor, passively scolds her for forgetting her daily chores, and grows a bit jealous. Finney, whose understanding of other people is extremely limited, can only see that his own wife keeps visiting another man's farm. He's too wealthy and sure of himself to suspect anything untoward. He's also not the kind of person to let such a situation—whatever it may be—continue, if his pride in a story about holding a disobedient dog in a snowstorm until it froze to death is any indication.

The central relationship—between Abigail and Tallie—is, again, staged and performed with a level of subtlety that compels us to pay attention to the little details—a too-long look, a timid smile, a slight touching of fingers. The romance here, of course, becomes more obvious as the story and relationship progress (which makes that climactic montage far less of a revelation than the filmmakers seem to think it will be). So, too, does the complication of the husbands, each of whose presence feels increasingly unnecessary, distracting, and, especially in the case of Finney, like a way to force external conflict upon this tale.

These men are part of an entirely different story, which is what The World to Come eventually becomes. While the filmmakers certainly acknowledge that fact (The final shots remove one husband entirely), they don't seem to comprehend how much that story pulls away from the core relationship.

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