The World to Come
Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby excel in a raw, poetic paean to the hardship of nineteenth-century womanhood.
Better known as an actress, Mona Fastvold now offers her second feature film as a director and proves to be very adept in that capacity. What she brings us is an admirably atmospheric period piece set in Upstate New York in the year 1856. The tale is told through the diaries of the central character, Abigail, played by Katherine Waterston and, quite apart from being a narrative that gradually reveals Abigail’s discovery of her lesbian feelings, it comes across as a work that has at its heart a deeply feminine perspective on life. Indeed, the film does this so successfully that it comes as a surprise that it is based on a novel by a man, Jim Shepard, and that the screenplay is by one Ron Hansen and by Shepard himself.
The World to Come takes place over eight months and concentrates on two households. It is in February that Abigail and her farmer husband, Dyer (Casey Affleck), find that they have new neighbours in Finney (Christopher Abbott) and his wife, Tallie (Vanessa Kirby). Neither marriage seems ideal: we learn in time that Abigail had regarded Dyer as a suitable man to marry rather than being drawn to him on a deeper level and it appears that Finney is a man of moods, his darker side coming out even more strikingly due to Tallie’s failure to give him a child. In contrast, Abigail has given birth but has lost her young daughter to diphtheria the previous September. However, there is from the outset an underlying rapport between Abigail and Tallie and The World to Come is at its best in showing how an instinctive friendship grows into something much deeper.
Quite rightly, the film’s pace is unhurried (at times it seems a distant cousin of the even more minimalistic movies made by Kelly Reichardt) and there is total conviction in this portrait of the life-style of the period. This is further helped by the quality of the acting. If Affleck and Abbott are good but subsidiary here, Vanessa Kirby, so notable in the recent Pieces of a Woman, is again on fine form as Tallie. Nevertheless, with Abigail telling her own story, it is Katherine Waterston who is the pivot and her performance is quite excellent.
The use of Abigail’s diaries heard in voice-over throughout may at times bring in a touch of high-flown verbiage, but we are told that Abigail had turned to self-education as an escape from unhappiness and if for some there is a preponderance of words the visual aspect makes its own contribution to the strong sense for place and period. The title could be taken as a hint that the love of Abigail and Tallie arose at a time before the world would be ready to accept it and the climactic scenes of The World to Come do sometimes feel like a rather forced attempt to make a big statement. That’s no reason to be put off the film, but it does mean that for me it is the first half with it subtly realised portrayal of love flowering that is by far the more memorable. Waterston and Kirby marvellously suggest an attachment which, initially not fully identified for what it is, bursts out to reveal itself in a way that leads Abigail to acclaim that moment as one of astonishment and joy.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Katherine Waterston, Vanessa Kirby, Casey Affleck, Christopher Abbott, Karina Gherasim.
Dir Mona Fastvold, Pro Casey Affleck, Margarethe Baillou, David Hinojosa, Pamela Koffler and Whitaker Lader, Screenplay Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, from the short story by Jim Shepard, Ph André Chemeroff, Pro Des Jean-Vincent Puzos, Ed Dávid Jancsó, Music Daniel Blumberg, Costumes Luminita Lungu, Sound Leslie Shatz.
Killer Films/Yellow Bear Films/Ingenious Media/Sea Change Media-Sony Pictures Releasing International.
105 mins. USA. 2020. Rel: 23 July 2021. Cert. 15.