History has a nasty habit of burying the quiet ones. We usually think of the 19th-century American frontier as a place for "great men" and their muddy boots, but the 2020 film The World to Come flips that script. It’s a movie about what happens when two women find themselves trapped in the crushing isolation of 1850s upstate New York.
Honestly, it’s not just a "period piece." It’s basically a ghost story where the ghosts are still alive, trying to find a reason to wake up in the morning.
The World to Come Movie: A Story of Vanished Voices
You’ve probably seen the posters. Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby looking intensely at each other against a backdrop of bleak, frozen trees. But if you’re expecting a typical Hollywood romance with sweeping violins and a happy ending, you’re looking at the wrong film.
The World to Come movie is based on a short story by Jim Shepard. He actually co-wrote the screenplay with Ron Hansen, the guy who wrote The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. You can feel that DNA in the dialogue. It’s dense. It’s poetic. It’s sometimes a little "stilted," as some critics put it, but that’s the point.
Abigail (Waterston) is a farmer’s wife who has lost her young daughter to diphtheria. She lives with her husband Dyer—played by Casey Affleck—in a state of emotional rigor mortis. They move around each other like strangers in a tiny, cold house. Then, Tallie (Kirby) moves in next door.
Why the Setting Isn't What You Think
Here is a fun fact: they didn't shoot this in New York.
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Even though the story is set in the rugged Northeast, director Mona Fastvold took the production to the mountains of Romania. Why? Because it’s one of the few places left that actually looks like 19th-century America did before we paved over everything. The landscape is a character itself. It’s brutal. It’s muddy. When the winter hits in this movie, you can almost feel the frostbite through the screen.
Fastvold used 16mm film to give it a "painterly" texture. She wanted it to look like a living painting, specifically referencing the works of Winslow Homer. It’s not "clean" history. It’s gritty.
The Core Conflict: Beyond the Romance
Most people label this as a "lesbian period drama" and leave it at that. That's a bit of a disservice. While the relationship between Abigail and Tallie is the heart of the film, the movie is really about the theft of time.
These women didn't have "leisure." They weren't sitting around journaling all day for fun. They were plucking chickens, scrubbing floors, and trying not to die of pneumonia. Their "romance" happens in the stolen minutes between chores.
- Abigail: Internal, grieving, highly literate but socially starved.
- Tallie: Bold, vibrant, but married to a man (Christopher Abbott) who is increasingly paranoid and controlling.
The men in the film aren't just one-dimensional villains, which makes it more uncomfortable. Casey Affleck’s Dyer isn't a bad man; he’s just a man of his time—taciturn, confused, and utterly incapable of meeting Abigail’s emotional needs. Christopher Abbott’s Finney, on the other hand, is the looming shadow. He represents the "masculine norm" of the era that viewed wives as property.
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The Power of the Diary
The movie relies heavily on voiceover.
This is usually a "no-no" in filmmaking, but here, it’s Abigail reading her ledger. She records the price of potatoes alongside the "astonishment" of her feelings for Tallie. It creates this weird, intimate bridge between her boring, daily survival and her rich inner life.
What Actually Happens at the End? (Spoilers)
If you’re looking for a "happily ever after," stop now.
In Shepard’s original story, Tallie just disappears. In the movie, it’s a bit more visceral. Tallie is found dead—supposedly of "illness," though the film heavily implies Finney had a hand in it. The final scenes show Abigail visiting the body and later imagining a world where they could have been together.
It’s a "same-sex tragedy," a trope that some viewers find frustrating. However, the filmmakers argue that this was the reality of the time. There was no "away" to run to. The frontier was a trap.
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Expert Insight: Why It Ranks as a Modern Classic
Critics generally liked it, but it didn't blow the box office away. It holds about a 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. People loved the acting—Waterston is incredible—but some found the pacing "unhurried." That’s a polite way of saying it’s slow.
But if you like movies like Portrait of a Lady on Fire or Ammonite, this is essential viewing. It’s a raw, poetic look at "womanhood" in a century that didn't care about women's hearts.
Practical Next Steps for Viewers
If you’ve watched The World to Come movie and want to dive deeper, here is what you should actually do:
- Read the Short Story: Find Jim Shepard’s collection The World to Come. The prose is even sharper than the movie, and it gives you more context on the other "doomed" figures he writes about.
- Watch the "Sister" Films: Pair this with Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) or God’s Own Country (2017) to see how modern directors are re-imagining queer history.
- Research the "Queer Lion": The film won this award at the Venice Film Festival. Looking into past winners is a great way to find high-quality, under-the-radar cinema.
- Check the Score: The music by Daniel Blumberg is experimental and haunting. Listen to it on its own; it changes how you perceive the film's "quiet" moments.
Don't just watch it for the "forbidden love" aspect. Watch it for the way it captures the sheer effort of staying human in a world that wants to turn you into a machine for labor. It’s a heavy watch, but a necessary one for anyone interested in the "vanished voices" of the American frontier.