Leave the World Behind director Sam Esmail clarifies the meaning behind the movie’s mysteriously menacing deer herd. Starring Julia Roberts, Mahershala Ali and Ethan Hawke, Netflix’s recently-released drama depicts a mysterious end-of-the-world scenario, where technology and nature both seem to have gone haywire. A small group of people stuck together in a country house experience a series of bizarre events, and try to piece together what’s happening, as civilization appears to unravel around them.
Among the many Leave the World Behind mysteries viewers were left pondering, none was more puzzling than the behavior of a deer herd that arrives to variously charm and menace the movie’s characters, but indeed, according to director Esmail, the audience was not meant to understand the animals’ behavior – or anything else in the movie – in a strictly literal way. As he explained to Collider, the film is meant to feel like a nightmare where nothing makes logical sense. As for the deer, he explained, “They’re representing the ominous warning from nature to us that something’s off, and we’re not listening.” Check out what else he had to say below:
It’s not meant for it to be like an essay where every plot point is annotated with logic and references. … I wanted this film to feel like a dream that slowly turns into a nightmare. I was committed to that. That’s the experience that I was committed to giving the audience, and nothing for me ever got in the way of that. So, whenever people are trying to piece together the film in a purely detached, logical way, I think that doesn’t work, and honestly, I don’t think it works with most films. I think a film has to be felt and experienced, and not necessarily thought through in that way.
It’s Telling That Julia Roberts’ Amanda And Her Daughter React Differently To The Deer
The deer first show up early in Leave the World Behind, and become a source of fascination for Rose Sandford (Farrah Mackenzie), who observes their odd behavior almost like she’s watching a TV show. Rose is set up as a character who spends all her time staring at screens – her greatest desire in life is to see the Friends finale, which she finally gets to do in the divisive Leave the World Behind ending scene – so it’s perhaps telling that she reacts to the film’s strange events like someone who isn’t quite connected to reality.
Rose’s mom Amanda Sandford (Roberts) reacts differently when she encounters the same deer later in the film. Amanda and Ruth (Myha’la) are in the woods looking for a missing Rose when the herd arrives to menace them, and the two women respond not with wonder but terror. Being older than Rose, and more experienced with the real world and its dangers, Amanda and Ruth react defensively to a shockingly large number of very big, scary-looking animals suddenly appearing, gesticulating and yelling until the herd disperses.
Amanda’s instincts as a mother and protector are on display throughout Leave the World Behind, her reaction to the deer being just one example (at that moment, she even seems protective toward Ruth, a character she earlier did not trust or like). Rose does not yet have such instincts, and still lives in a state of innocence, where the end of the world seems less interesting than an episode of Friends.
