Z for Zachariah review

The post-apocalyptic genre is officially back in vogue. This year alone we have seen the return of “Mad Max,” a “Walking Dead” spin-off series and there’s still one more “Hunger Games” before that franchise comes to a close. It’s the end of the world and not only do we feel fine, we want more. But unlike the studded leather jackets, crossbows and sandstorm car-chases that usually occupy the genre, Craig Zobel’s “Z for Zachariah” is a slow-burn melodrama, using the setup of the post-apocalypse as a way to tell a deeply intimate and small-scale parable that reflects the larger complications of society as we know it today.

“Wolf of Wall Street” actress Margot Robbie plays Ann, a bright-eyed survivor who lives in a mystical valley in the woods that’s somehow been spared from the nuclear fallout and radiation that has poisoned the rest of the world. After what was left of her religious family took to road find other survivors, she spent the better part of a year keeping the crops growing and preparing for the rough winter ahead, with only her dog at her side. This all changes when she meets Loomis (Chiwetal Ejiofor), a wandering civil-engineer who she decides takes in and nurse back to health after he nearly dies from radiation poisoning.

Together Ann and Loomis try to rebuild their lives and ration their food supply, and after sharing meals and memories together, they begin to develop an emotional connection. Enter Caleb (Chris Pine): a cocky young coalminer with piercing blue eyes and a GQ smile. As it turns out, three’s a crowd and with two men now in the house, Ann is forced to mitigate the bubbling competition between one man who’s charming and who shares her down-home Christian values and another who’s fatherly and practical but a spiritual skeptic.

With “Twilight” fresh in our rear-view, the love-triangle aspect of the film might seem trite and tired but Zobel doesn’t allow this familiar dynamic to sit on the surface as a simple fantasy born of sexually frustration. Instead he uses this trope to create a quiet and subtle chamber piece that alludes to much bigger questions about faith, skepticism and racial familiarity, all with feminist undertones.

At one point Loomis sees the budding attraction between Caleb and his would-be life-partner and quietly informs Ann that she can make whatever decision she wants—as if she needed his permission. Nevertheless Ann is then forced to feel pressure and guilt over an unfair choice that has been thrust upon her. Without realizing or asking for it, she is then put the touchy position of possibly being chastised by the men in her life, including the deified memory her father who’s hand-built church must be torn down to create a water combine to restore energy to the house.

“Z for Zachariah” is a film that stands back and lets the performances and the characters guide the bigger picture. As such, some might find the veiled motivations of the three leads, and the ambiguous nature of their actions to hold little dramatic traction as a science-fiction premise. I myself become entranced by the Garden of Eden/Cane and Able metaphor that plays out and the subverting of their original moral purpose.  Robbie, Ejiofor and Pine carry the whole the thing effortlessly and explore the quiet intensity of their character’s repressed conflicts. Though the movie might seem minimal in form, the nuanced performances and expressive camera work hints a world of mythic and political complexity that exists just underneath the love story.

Grade: B+

Originally Published in the Idaho State Journal/Sep-2015