The Apocalypse According to Myha'la Herrold
by Raquel Imani
Sometimes, the best part about watching a new movie or TV show is finding a character to fall head-over-heels in love with. Not a shirtless Sterling K. Brown in American Fiction type of love, (Sterling if you’re reading this, call me.) more like Ayo Edebiri in The Bear or Vivian Oprah in Rye Lane; characters who are so bold that they seem to explode from your screen. The ones who are imperfect, fearless, and vulnerable all at the same time. In Leave the World Behind Myha’la Herrold encapsulates that perfectly as Ruth, a twenty-something fireball with a very low tolerance for bullshit.
The first time we meet Ruth she is with her father, G.H. Washington (played by award-winning actor Mahershala Ali) standing outside their state-of-the-art, upstate New York home. They are fleeing the city which has been hit by an eerie power outage. In their home, however, are Samantha and Clay (Julia Roberts and Ethan Hawke) who have Airbnb’d the Washingtons’ home for a spontaneous getaway and are rightfully perplexed to see two strangers on “their” front steps so late at night. As G.H. clumsily explains who he and his daughter are and what they’re doing there, it becomes obvious that Samantha’s real problem is that the owners of the luxury vacation home are Black. “This is…your house?” A question that’s not really a question. While G.H. chuckles sheepishly, his age and temperament allowing Samantha’s undertones to fly past him, Ruth pins Samantha with an unforgiving gaze and narrows her eyes.
This scene is where the audience first sees who Ruth is. Her unwillingness to be made to feel less than is captured here as a small act of defiance, but as the movie progresses we see that she has a specific belief system; one that requires her to hold her head high and fire back as good as she gets.
In one particular scene, Ruth joins Samantha lounging at the pool. Samantha asks if Ruth intends to go for a swim and Ruth says no because “It seems like a hassle” to which Samantha flippantly asks, “Why, because of your hair?” Ruth doesn’t make a fuss about the comment, instead, she serves Samantha her signature icy glare and coolly says, “More like I don’t trust that one of your kids didn’t pee in the pool.”
This is a beautifully crafted quip that doesn’t directly address the micro (macro?) aggression, but lets Samantha know that “two can play that game.” Ruth has all the savoir-faire of a girl who knows exactly who she is.
Another reason to love Ruth is that despite her clever one-liners, she has a plushy soft interior. It’s mentioned throughout the movie that Maya, Ruth’s mother, is an art dealer and has flown overseas for work but is trying to make her way back home. Throughout the movie, Ruth constantly frets about her mother, worried the recent freakish events may derail her mother’s journey, or worse, that she may already be dead.
Throughout the movie, the Washingtons have been sleeping in the guest suite in their basement since Samantha and her family are occupying the main floor. (Of course, Ruth was not happy about this.) G.H. has been sleeping on the floor, allowing his daughter to have the bed. But in one scene, Ruth asks her father if he can sleep in the bed with her, admitting that she’s scared in an uncharacteristically vulnerable timbre.
This vulnerability quickly disguises itself, however, when Ruth reminds her father that they’re all they have. “I’m asking for you to remember that if the world falls apart, trust should not be doled out easily to anyone…” We see here that Ruth is her father’s north star. G.H. is by no means, a pushover. He works in private equity and shakes hands with incredibly powerful people, but Ruth seems to think that he has a blindside. One she watches with unrelenting fervor.
We can trace the way Ruth carries herself throughout the movie, not easily shaken with unwavering assurance in herself, to who her parents are and how they raised her. Her dad, who walks the aisles of power in private equity, and her mother a jet-setting art dealer, both have careers that require a great deal of confidence and assertiveness. Traits which they’ve obviously passed down to their daughter. In addition, it’s clear by the intentional decor in the home that they have instilled in Ruth not only a strong sense of self but of culture as well.
The first morning that Ruth and her father wake up in their home, the scene opens up on a red and green map of the United States. It’s actually an annotated map of slave, indigenous, and immigrant insurrections in America spanning centuries. The United States of Attica was created by Faith Ringgold following the deadly Attica Prison uprising in 1971, where prisoners revolted against inhumane and despicable living conditions. The Attica Prison revolt is an important part of Black American and frankly, American history. It speaks to how mass incarceration disproportionately affects black and brown people and how it’s used as a weapon to destabilize marginalized communities.
Another notable scene is earlier on in the movie when Ruth decides to sneak off to a quiet part of the house for a smoke (vape) break. (Very Gen Z.) As the camera pans around the room, we see that the space is decorated wall to wall with black war memorabilia. A quick Google search shows that some of these portraits are from the First World War, specifically 1918. The scene ends with Ruth leaning back in a chair, blowing smoke up at one of the vintage photographs. It seems as though her parents believe very much in being rooted in culture. Maybe they’re of the school of thought that you can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re coming from.
In a world where so many people are busy trying to be something they’re not, it’s rare to find someone so secure in themselves that it makes others uncomfortable (see, any interaction Ruth has with Samantha). Not only does Ruth have an acute sense of self, but she’s sensitive when it matters, brazen when required, and she has a vaping habit (confession time: I too am Gen Z). When the apocalypse comes, I definitely want Ruth on my team.