The World to Come(2021)

Plot Summary

• In January 1856 in rural Schoharie County in upstate New York, Abigail (Katherine Waterson) and her husband Dyer (Casey Affleck) live an isolated life in the country working as farmers. They are both devastated by the recent loss of their young daughter Nellie.A new similarly childless couple moves into the cabin beside them. Abigail is immediately entranced by Tallie (Vanessa Kirby), the wife, and the two women form a quick and deep friendship. Abigail confides to Tallie that her marriage with Dyer is based on practicality, not romance while Tallie reveals that her husband Finney (Christopher Abbott) can be quarrelsome and controlling.For Abigail's birthday, Tallie buys her an atlas map of the state that she had longed for. When Tallie is returning home from the birthday visit she is caught in a violent snowstorm that nearly kills her. Her husband takes her away to recuperate, and when she returns it is spring and Tallie resumes her visits to Abigail.Eventually Tallie reveals to Abigail that she only dreams of being with her. Abigail feels similarly and the two kiss. They begin a sexual affair behind their husbands backs. Dyer, who has become increasingly emotional since their child's death, is upset at the time that Abigail spends with Tallie. At the same time, Tallie's husband becomes similarly jealous at the hours she is spending away from him.Finney eventually asks Abigail and Dyer to dinner where he uncomfortably brings up their lost child and Abigail notices bruises on Tallie's neck. Afterwards Tallie doesn't visit for a week. Abigail finally goes in search of her and finds her rented house empty with only a bloody kerchief left behind. Though she suspects mischief, she eventually receives a letter from Tallie informing her she has moved 85 miles away.Abigail insists on going to see Tallie and Dyer reluctantly complies. However by the time they arrive Tallie is dead which Finney claims is from diphtheria.Abigail returns to her unhappy life on the farm. She and Dyer continue to work together but grow more emotionally estranged. To comfort herself, Abigail imagines murdering Finney one day and tries to picture Nellie and Tallie comforting themselves in the afterlife.

Storyline

• 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. — La Biennale Schoharie County, 1856. Unable to cope with loss, heart-wrenching grief and silent depression consume Abigail. However, life is unpredictable--as she drifts apart from Dyer, her farmer husband, the urgency of camaraderie brings together defeated Abigail and Tallie, a luminous new neighbour. As a result, revelatory feelings pave the way for a blooming, out-of-view friendship amid a harsh world carved out by men. But this is uncharted territory. What is it like to be seen and heard, to love and be loved? — Nick Riganas