Ann Burden (Margot Robbie) finds herself in an emotionally charged love triangle after a disaster wipes out most of civilization. Ann, Caleb and Loomis are the last known survivors. ( /Lionsgate)
Part post-apocalyptic psychological thriller and part teenage coming-of-age drama, "Z for Zachariah" upends the conventions of both those genres to construct, out of their ruins, something else entirely. Directed by Craig Zobel ("Compliance") and adapted by Nissar Modi from the posthumously published novel by Robert C. O'Brien, the resulting film is a darkly nuanced Genesis fable centering on a stolid, preternaturally capable 19-year-old Eve and her 30-something Adam, a man who pales, in terms of strength of character, next to his adolescent partner.
As young-adult films go, this one is startlingly grown up.
Margot Robbie plays the film’s Eve, a country girl named Ann who has been living — since a nuclear cataclysm — in her family home in the middle of an edenic rural American valley that has somehow remained untouched by the radioactive fallout that seems to have poisoned the rest of the world. As far as Ann knows, she’s the last human being on Earth. That opinion suddenly changes with the arrival of John (Chiwetel Ejiofor), an engineer who wanders into her sanctuary wearing a hazmat suit and pulling a small trailer behind him. For a while after Ann takes him in, they become like the first man and woman, fishing in the valley’s pristine pond, harvesting vegetables, rebuilding a broken generator and making guilty goo-goo eyes at each other.
As for the sin they’re contemplating, the age difference is slightly creepy, but what are you going to do at the end of the world?
The cozy domesticity ends when a second, much younger man named Caleb (Chris Pine) shows up. Aside from the characters’ different ages, there are other cultural divisions: Ann is deeply religious, while John, a man of science, is not. Caleb — who, like Ann, has a blue-collar background — apparently pretends to be devout in order to ingratiate himself with her. John is black; Ann and Caleb are white.
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Tension, in other words, hangs in the air like a toxic fog. Zobel builds up a nice mood of sexual tension and menace as the plot advances, stirring in themes of race, class, faith and gender. Though John and Caleb are the ones who get together to build a water wheel to power the generator — out of the ruins of the town church, a metaphor if ever there was one — it is Ann who comes across as the enterprising one here. The sexual jealousy that develops between John and Caleb — each of whom wants to become the last man, or “Zachariah,” in the parlance of a Biblical alphabet primer — makes both of them seem petty and weak-minded.
There is no grand moral or message to this story, except perhaps to remind us of both the depths and heights that people are capable of in extremity. The acting is strong, with Robbie and Ejiofor turning in performances that feel powerfully authentic, even in moments of ethical confusion. Maybe especially in moments of ethical confusion.
“Z for Zachariah” isn’t a portrait of the end of the world so much as the dawn of a new one. If it tells us anything about human nature, it’s that the tenancy of our species on this planet has been forever marked by moral compromise, and our willingness to turn a blind eye to it.
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Correction: An earlier version of this review incorrectly described the character of Ann as 16 years old. Although she is 16 in the novel on which the film is based, her age is never mentioned in the film. According to the filmmakers, she is meant to be 19 in the movie. This version has been updated.
PG-13.At the Angelika Pop-Up at Union Market. Contains a scene of sexuality, partial nudity and coarse language. 98 minutes.
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