There is no explanation, however the ending of The world behind you, the beautiful thriller directed by Sam Esmail which is streaming on Netflix. It isn’t there in the sense that everyone interprets it as they want: we’ll say this straight away, together with the fact that on this page we will try to limit spoilers to a minimum for those who haven’t watched it yet.
We say it right away also because “the world behind you explanation” is among the most used search strings on Google in Italy in the last 7 days, with a real surge since December 8th, that is, since the film has been visible. It is a trend that does not only concern our country, because the tutorials to understand the ending can be found online more or less in any language in the Western world.
Below we try to understand why, what the film is aboutwhy the ending can be perplexing and also the reason why it made Elon Musk a little angry with Netflix.
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WARNING: POSSIBLE SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT
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Teslas can charge from solar panels even if the world goes fully Mad Max and there is no more gasoline!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 8, 2023
What The World Behind You is about
Taken from a little-known person novel by the American Rumaan Alam, Leave the World Behind It’s what was once called a drama film, but it’s also both a thriller and a bit of a detective story. With a splash of horror, if you like (“I won’t watch deer never again like before”, many wrote on social media).
Produced by Obama familytells a seemingly simple story: the typical American family, mother, father, two teenage children (the parents are Julia Roberts ed Ethan Hawke) decides to spend a few days of vacation away from New York, away from the madding crowd and towards Long Island, an hour’s drive from Manhattan. At first everything is fine: the place is beautiful, the house is beautiful, there is a swimming pool and there is peace. Internet does not workbut in houses in the countryside it’s something that happens, maybe it will pass and the 4 don’t worry too much about it.
Just that time passes and yet the problem does not go away, and the 4 really start to worry about it. Also because in a short space of time, from the first “mum, the internet doesn’t work!” things start to fall apart, a lot and quickly. In the 2 hours and 20 minutes of the film, the protagonists (including a good Mahershala Ali as usual) will begin to hypothesize that it was a small blackout, then a huge blackout, then a hacker attack, an invasion of America that not even in Power attack, or even some sort of civil war. Until the ending, which is precisely the part of the film that left everyone stunned.
The world behind you in front of everyone
There’s a lot of talk online about this film, because people are watching it a lot: at the time of writing, it is both at the top of the Top Ten films and the most searched for on Netflix in Italy and is the most watched film on the platform worldwide, with almost 42 million views in 3 days.
Not only that: it turns out also first in the streaming rankings compiled daily by JustWatch and related to all streaming sites: in our country it is ahead of September, Murder in Venice and well The Batman; in the United States it is at the top of a ranking that includes only Christmas films (because we know that Crystal trap It’s a Christmas movie.) This despite that The world behind you It’s not a Christmas movie and it is definitely not a film for a carefree evening: anxiety is the most reported of the sensations felt while watching, so much so that there is an abundance of comments like “too much tension, I had to watch it twice”.
netflix: the ranking of the Most Watched in the world
google trends: searches for the film in Italy
The hidden meanings of The World Behind You
Without going into excessive detail, the point is that not only the film is well built to raise anxiety in a gradual but constant and unstoppable way, but also effectively represents and illustrates the main fears of the modern world. Including those that fuel the paranoia of conspiracy theorists: surveillancepopulation control, use and abuse of drugs, cyberattacchi, revolt of nature, radiation, lack of food. There is even a moment when you can see it the American version of IT Alertwhose activation months ago scared people greatly.
The most powerful and obvious metaphor is the one dealing with the technology that has somehow enslaved usunable to do anything without a device and connection: the two children of the couple are bored to death without music and streaming TV series, the padre he can’t travel a few kilometers without getting lost if he doesn’t have GPS, there madre he has no way of contacting the customer support of the site on which he booked the holiday home, and so on.
There are other interpretations and other interpretations and there are many of them circulating online, even abroad: we found the one shared on social media by the psychologist Pietro Petrilli effective and centered (also in terms of originality), according to which the whole film would be a metaphor for America “criticizing itself” and of American society in general. In detail:
the protagonists appropriate a house that is not theirs, just as Europeans appropriated land that belonged to them Native Americans; the real hosts, who are African Americans, sleep in the basement of the house (despite the fact that it is theirs) while whites occupy the best rooms; the cost of the pills to save Archie is very high because American healthcare it has very high prices; little Rose is very young, like the United States compared to the rest of the world, and makes immoderate use of both food and streaming, a bit like Americans.
The 2 interpretations of the ending of The World Behind You
Rose, among other things, is at the center of the last scene of the filmremained misunderstood by most and among other things different from the ending of Alam’s book: while the world around her collapses and her parents are desperately looking for her, she sits in front of the TV in an unknown house to watch the last episode of Friends, the only thing she was missing and evidently the only thing she was interested in. What does it mean? Is it an open door for a possible second film, as many have speculated? Probably not.
It’s probably just one way to describe young people today, theirs flow between situations, people and feelings with the same apparent apathy with which they scroll through the wall of a social network, among the songs on Spotify or indeed the episodes of a serial. Which is the putting into practice of what Carrà sang almost 50 years ago, if you look closely: “If by chance the world falls, I’ll move a little further”.
There is also another, less negative interpretationlinked precisely to Friends and to the famous theme song that repeats “I’ll be there for you”: for Rose, taking refuge in the series is not only selfishness but is also a way to escape from an ugly and frightening reality and seek comfort in a virtual world (the series) which already from its title carries a message of friendship, hope and closeness. As the director explained to GQ, moreover: “When Rose walks down the corridor towards the bunker she is there a poster with the phrase Hope begins in the darkness, which is a concept I’ve always loved. In human history we’ve been through some very dark times and we’ve always found a way to pull ourselves together and get out of them, and I really wanted to ending the film on some sort of positive note”. Maybe she didn’t turn out very well for him, judging by the disheartened messages you read online.
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Why is Elon Musk mad at The World Behind You?
Beyond the final one, a famous scene from the film is the one involving Tesla cars, a sea of all-white Model 3s and Model Ss piled one on top of the other along a road that connects Long Island to Manhattan, that when you see it you think “but why are they all Teslas?”. There is an explanation, but Elon Musk didn’t like it very much.
After seeing the film (or more likely while watching it), the company’s number one chirped all his disappointment: “Teslas can charge from solar panels even if the world became like that of Mad Max and there was no more petrol!”. Too bad that the explanation, as many have pointed out to him, is that the cars have been hacked to target and kill people, not that they don’t run because they have no battery. This becomes clear a few minutes later having seen the scene of the traffic jam. Unless she decides to turn everything off in a rage, of course.
@capoema