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 relation... (Full plot summary below)
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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.
Leave your thoughts about The World to Come.
| VarietyGuy LodgeThis is filmmaking as attuned to incremental shifts in light and landscape (Romania’s, in fact, gorgeously filling in for undeveloped upstate New York) as the ebb and flow of a character’s interior joy, written in a face unaccustomed to smiling. |
| The TelegraphRobbie CollinIt's as simultaneously chilling and warming as a slug of ice-cold vodka, and just as liable to make your mind swim and eyes prick. |
| Screen DailyJonathan RomneyScripted with heightened literary cadences by Ron Hansen and Jim Shepard, the film is well crafted in every respect, and marks an acting career high for Katherine Waterston, as well as a fine showcase for the ever more impressive Vanessa Kirby. |
| IndieWireDavid EhrlichThe World to Come is at its sharpest when trying to articulate the alchemy that happens when theory and sensation collide with each other and morph into something new. |
| Austin ChronicleSteve DavisIn her sophomore film, director Fastvold, assisted by painterly cinematographer André Chemetoff, has envisioned a softer version of the American frontier, still untamed but capable of hope. It’s a befitting vision of a world to come, one in which forbidden love will one day finally find its name. |
| The Film StageRory O'ConnorIt is a thoughtful, unquestionably moving piece of work with much to say about the inner lives of the women at the center, but it could have used another gear |
| The GuardianPeter BradshawFastvold’s film is distinctive in that she shows us how physical constraint and violence are part of the fabric of living. |
| Rolling StoneK. Austin CollinsThe World to Come is full of inversions, deviations from the usual themes, complicated as it is by interlocking contrasts, unexpected emphases. This is a movie in which love springs in winter, whereas spring beckons devastation. |
| The New York TimesBen KenigsbergWaterston and Kirby are both superb at creating characters whose attraction must be shown to grow by degrees, without overt admission. Affleck and Abbott, too, navigate a tricky dynamic, playing men who perhaps lack an understanding of their own compassion or brutishness. |
| Total FilmJames MottramAn exquisitely rendered period tale, The World To Come is a slow-burning but ultimately rewarding drama of the heart. |
