Butler's Cinema Scene

Chris Pine, Margot Robbie, Chiwetel Ejiofor

“Z FOR ZACHARIAH”  My rating: B (Opens Aug. 28 at the Cinetopia)

95 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

In a lush valley somewhere in Appalachia, a young woman lives alone. With her dog she hunts wild game. She grows vegetables using hand tools.

The valley is her entire world — not by choice but of necessity. In the wake of nuclear disaster that has left most of Earth too radioactive to sustain life, this few square miles somehow has clean air and water.

It’s a miracle.

At least that’s what Ann (Margot Robbie) thinks.  She’s lived here all her life with her father — a rural preacher — and a younger brother. But months ago the menfolk ventured forth to look for survivors beyond the valley. They’ve not returned. Probably won’t.

So when an outsider arrives, it’s cause for both celebration and concern.

Happily, John (Chiwetel Ejiofor) appears to be a pretty good guy. Reeling from radiation poisoning, he’s slow to regain his strength. He was a research engineer who survived the crisis in an underground government bunker.  But after months of claustrophobia he decided he’d rather take his chances on dying under a blue sky.

Written by Nissar Modi and directed by Craig Zobel (“Compliance”), “Z for Zachariah” is a quiet, reflective, tightly-wound post-apocalyptic tale which relies on sharp characterizations instead of special effects.

Ann and John are happy to have each other, but they are distinctly different individuals.  She’s religious (the film’s title refers a children’s Bible book, “A is for Adam,” that sits on her bookshelf) and while no dummy — the house is jammed with books — has only limited experience with the world beyond her homestead. She may very well be a virgin.

John, on the other hand, is a rationalist…either agnostic or atheist. His faith is in science and his own abilities. Soon he’s contemplating building a waterwheel-powered electric generator at the foot of a nearby waterfall.  Of course he’ll have to tear down the homey chapel in which Ann’s father used to preach.  They’ll need the wood for construction material.

But when they’re done he and Ann will have lights and an operating freezer in which to preserve food.

Little by little the two share their pasts.  When Ann offers herself to him, John delicately turns her down, noting that they’ve got all the time in the world to move on to the next stage of their relationship.

He’ll regret his chivalrous approach when another man appears to upend the delicate balance.

Caleb (Chris Pine) is a coal miner who sat out the worst of the conflagration in a deep shaft. His background is much like Ann’s — particularly when it comes to religion. He’s young. And he’s white.

“Z is for Zachariah” owes no small debt to  1959’s  “The World, the Flesh and the Devil,” in which Harry Belafonte, Inger Stevens and Mel Ferrer found themselves the sole human occupants of New York City. As with that earlier film, issues of race, age and outlook creep into the mix.

Shot mostly in New Zealand, the film is great looking, but it’s the performances that make it go.

Ejiofor is, of course, one of the great actors in contemporary cinema. Here he carefully mines John’s innate decency, all the while toying with a bad case of jealousy.

Pine is suitably vague as Caleb, who could pass for a good guy but retains an element of good ol’ boy creep.

The real revelation here is Robbie, who played sexy baubles in “The Wolf of Wall Street”and “Focus.” Sans makeup and clothed mostly in baggy dungarees and a Co-op Seeds baseball cap, she deftly balances Ann’s naivete and native intelligence, creating a subtly nuanced and totally believable character. She even nails the West Virginia accent.

| Robert W. Butler