How I Live Now is a 2013 film. It’s partly a dystopian future war story, partly a love story, and partly a coming of age story when survival is the all important goal.
How I Live Now stars an 18 year old Saoirse Ronan as a 16 year old American teen who is sent to England by her father. She’s meant to live with her Aunt Penn (Anna Chancellor) and her three cousins.
Her 14 year old cousin Isaac (Tom Holland) picks her up at the airport and drives her home using back roads. At the house she meets her younger cousin Piper (Harley Bird) who is thrilled to have another girl in the house. Her slightly older cousin Eddie (George MacKay) shows up later with a hawk he’s healing and makes a big impression on her.
As in, a she’s attracted to him impression. Even though they are cousins and that kind of attraction is forbidden.
Daisy’s aunt is involved in war forecasting and leaves for Switzerland. Before she can get home, nuclear bombs fall on London and war is declared.
Meanwhile Daisy and Eddie have had sex and want to be together. When soldiers come and separate the boys and the girls to be taken away to different “safer” locations, Eddie makes Daisy promise to get away and return home. He will do the same.
The second half of the story stays with Daisy and Piper as they are placed in a home, sent to do farm work, and finally escape. Daisy has a map, a compass, food, a pistol, and is ready to walk across England to get back to Eddie and Isaac.
It’s a perilous journey. They meet unpleasant people, can’t find safe water to drink, get blisters, find dead bodies and generally have a horrific time getting home. Somehow, despite living rough, Daisy’s hair was always clean and perfect and her face was untouched by dirt.
Things at home were not what they expected to find.
We don’t often see films that explore what happens when the world falls apart and the government fails in places like England. We see plenty of such films set in places where the characters are brown or black. Setting it in England is supposed to make you think, and it does. I thought the film was interesting from that point of view. Young as she was at the time, Saoirse Ronan was excellent.
The film is based on a 2004 novel by Meg Rosoff, which was considerably changed in the film.
How I Live Now is streaming on Max. If you missed it when it came out in 2013, here’s your chance to have a look.
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I really liked the book and have avoided the movie because it’s quite different – but as soon as I saw you’d watched it, I felt like since it’s been more than 10 years since I read the book, maybe I can watch it now? Maybe. 😉
I didn’t read the book but did see a summary of how they swapped the characters around and made some other changes. I thought the film was good but my general position is the book is always better.