Posted by Netflix’s movie Leave The World Behind is full of meaningful symbols: here are Archie’s teeth falling out & its nightmare explained.
It was definitely the scariest thing we saw in Leave The World Behind. More than the herd of deer getting slowly close to Ruth at the movie’s end, more than the awareness that even the satellites stopped working. It is scarier than a war that began in the city, still far from the country house; it’s more worrying than the feeling we are just left alone with our poor means. When Archie’s teeth start falling out, we feel one of our fundamental certainties is taken away. Our physical body, the founding element of what we truly are as living beings, suddenly is no longer something we can rely on.
After the second night of the new era, just when the protagonists start understanding what the end of the world looks like, Archie wakes up, spits some blood on the floor, and then the spectators feel the shock of seeing him taking his teeth out, one after the other. It’s one of the things we never had doubts about: teeth come out during childhood and stay with us until we are old. They are there for a reason. It’s part of our evolution: with our teeth, we eat. We satisfy our first basic need; we make our survival possible. All of a sudden, this has just become a serious obstacle for Archie.
Archie’s teeth falling out symbolize how our worst nightmare comes true in Leave The World Behind. After all, that’s what the entire movie is about: everything has changed, the world is gone, and we no longer have safety, stability, or security. Normality will no longer be back, and we have no idea of how we will survive starting from tomorrow. At that moment, we start reevaluating all the basic things our lives are made of: Ruth starts accepting that her mother will never come back; little Rose focuses all her energies on trying to restore the only thing that makes her happy, the possibility to watch Friends. In the middle of all this, while every character reconsiders how his basic needs can be satisfied, Archie has his teeth on his hands.
Archie’s teeth falling out are not really explained in the plot of Leave The World Behind. The survivalist Danny has a theory, but it cannot be verified: it must be that unbearable noise they heard the day before, probably some kind of sonic weapon connected to the radioactivity in the air, all planned as a violent attack against the American population. But that can be the conspiracy theory of a madman. In any case, that’s part of the things that stay unanswered in the movie and the book. What really matters, here, is the symbol behind it.
The same day Leave The World Behind was released on Netflix, Vulture published this fantastic interview with the director Sam Esmail. The creator of Mr. Robot talks about how he discovered the book and how the plot perfectly matches the times we live in. Many symbols are discussed in that movie, and Archie’s teeth are the subject of one of the central questions of the interview. Sam Esmail’s answer is highly cryptic:
“I want to be careful how I answer this. I think it’s a nightmare. I think the movie’s a nightmare, and I think that, in nightmares, things happen that are inexplicable.”
Sam Esmail on Vulture, Dec 8, 2023
We don’t want to fall into the usual trap and believe the whole movie is a dream (it would be a cliché and would take away a significant portion of the film’s charm). Nevertheless, we cannot deny that teeth falling out are one of those unconscious symbols that generally come out only in our nightmares. For that reason, their psychological meaning becomes an important step for our understanding: our teeth are a symbol of strength, an element of pride, and an essential part of our self-image. Seeing our teeth falling out like Archie in Leave The World Behind symbolizes a complete loss of self-esteem, trust in our natural abilities, and control over our own bodies.
The world is no longer how we know it. A war is likely coming; we can’t rely on modern technology any longer, and all the fundamental elements of our society are under attack. While all this happens, Archie cannot even rely on his own body and watches his teeth decay behind his own eyes. The symbol of our ability to get what we need to survive is suddenly lost, and we are left there, helpless, defeated, unable to deal with what our life has become.
