The World to Come Movie Storyline. In upstate New York in the 1850s, Abigail begins a new year on the rural farm where she lives with her husband Dyer. As Abigail considers the year to come through her journal entries, we experience the marked contrast between her deliberate, stoic manner and her unraveling complex emotions. Spring arrives and Abigail meets Tallie, an emotionally frank and arrestingly beautiful newcomer renting a neighboring farm with her husband, Finney. The two strike up a tentative relationship, filling a void in their lives which neither knew existed.
The World to Come is a 2020 American drama film directed by Mona Fastvold, from a screenplay by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, based upon Shepard’s story of the same name. It stars Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby, Christopher Abbott, Casey Affleck, Karina Ziana Gherasim, Ioachim Ciobanu, Andreea Vasile, Liana Navrot, Sandra Personnic-House, and follows two neighboring couples battling hardship and isolation in mid-19th century America.
It had its world premiere at the 77th Venice International Film Festival on September 6, 2020, where it won the Queer Lion award for best LGBTQ-themed film at the festival. It was released in a limited release on February 12, 2021, followed by video on demand on March 2, 2021, by Bleecker Street.
Film Review for The World to Come
“I have become my grief.” So writes Abigail (Katherine Waterston) in the journal that was intended as a ledger for the quotidian details of 1850s US frontier farm life, but turns into a poetic account of her inner turmoil – Emily Dickinson-infused moments of anguish as she stoically chisels ice from the potatoes for lunch. Then one day a wagon rolls past bearing the new tenants to the neighbouring smallholding.
The husband barely registers, but the wife, Tallie (Vanessa Kirby), is magnetic: tawny curls, curious eyes seeking out Abigail’s and holding them in a moment of tingling intimacy. Love at first sight is a frivolity not afforded to women who are chosen by their husbands for their “good sense, efficient habits and handy ways”. Still, there’s something between them, something that Abigail, for all her eloquence, can’t quite find a way to name.
Taking its cue from Tallie’s honeyed colouring, the film – the second feature from the Norwegian director Mona Fastvold – subtly warms once Tallie arrives. Abigail’s farm – a glum, blocky building so dark and featureless that it seems to be an absence, a hole in the snow, rather than a presence – takes on the comforts of a home. The connection between Tallie and Abigail is born out of confidences shared about marriages in which “wifely duties” are just an onerous addition to a list of chores that also includes darning, milking cows and shovelling chicken droppings. But it blossoms into something richer.
This is a singularly subdued kind of storytelling. Passions run deep, but there’s a reticence in the film-making that makes them feel like a whispered secret in a church pew rather than a grand, soul-baring declaration. As such, Fastvold’s film won’t be for everyone: it’s closer in tone to the gentle, slow-burning intimacy of First Cow than to the savage sadness of Brokeback Mountain. But there’s a satisfying literary intelligence at work. Co-writers Jim Shepard and Ron Hansen are both novelists, and The World to Come reflects that in its absorbing emotional layers and tender reverence for the written word.
The World to Come (2021)
Directed by: Mona Fastvold
Starring: Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby, Christopher Abbott, Casey Affleck, Karina Ziana Gherasim, Ioachim Ciobanu, Andreea Vasile, Liana Navrot, Sandra Personnic-House
Screenplay by: Ron Hansen, Jim Shepard
Production Design by: Jean-Vincent Puzos
Cinematography by: Andre Chemetoff
Film Editing by: Dávid Jancsó
Costume Design by: Luminita Lungu
Set Decoration by: Andreea Popa
Art Direction by: Anca Perja, Anca Perjaas, Andrei-Florian Popa
Music by: Daniel Blumberg
MPAA Rating: R for some sexuality / nudity.
Distributed by: Bleecker Street
Release Date: September 6, 2020 (Venice), February 12, 2021 (United States)
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