Adrift in a sea of abandonment

You are 4 years old and playing in the park. It is time to go, but you have other ideas. In the face of your parent’s rising consternation, you toddle off in the opposite direction.

Then the magic, mind-bending words are deployed: “All right, go ahead,� says your parent, who is beginning to turn away from you. “Go ahead, and I’ll leave without you.�

Leave without you. Your 4-year-old mind is quick to apprehend the ramifications. You are to be left behind. Cut loose. Abandoned. You about-face and toddle as fast as you can to the arms of the one who keeps you safe and fed and secure.

For years, filmmakers have exploited that universal and pervasive fear in movies that run the gamut from the laugh riot of “Home Alone� and the gleeful housewife’s emancipation tale that is Italy’s “Bread and Tulips� to the survival game of the military action film “Behind Enemy Lines� and the terror of today’s shark tale “Open Water.�

Comic, scary or horrific, films in the left-behind genre all begin with the events leading up to abandonment. In 1990’s “Home Alone,� parents mistakenly leave behind their youngest son, Kevin (Macaulay Culkin), when they make a hectic departure for a holiday vacation in Paris. In Silvio Soldini’s 2000 comedy “Bread and Tulips,� Licia Maglietta’s Italian housewife Rosalba Barletta is accidentally left behind at a rest stop when the tourist bus carrying her Type-A husband and two oafish teenage sons departs without her. The fact that her absence aboard the bus goes unregistered by her family is the first clue that this under-appreciated wife and mother may not be so bad off without them.

John Moore’s 2001 action picture “Behind Enemy Lines� is set near the end of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Owen Wilson’s Navy navigator Chris Burnett is dispatched on a routine reconnaissance flight when he spots something suspicious beyond the flight path. When he and his pilot veer off to investigate, their plane is shot down. The pilot is caught and executed, leaving Burnett alone and on the run in hostile territory.

In “Open Water,� which is based on a true story, a couple are left floating in the vast briny blue when the scuba boat they were on mistakenly leaves without them. The dive boat operators were keeping count of their charges, but director Chris Kentis shows how a mistake can get made in the math, one that leaves two divers in serious peril.

Left-behind movies are all constructed around a series of obstacles that must be overcome. The parties left behind are set against difficulties ranging from a lack of food or money to enemy fire and hungry sharks. How they cope and the outcome of their efforts set the tone of the movie they are in.

Culkin’s Kevin must deal with feeding himself and fending off two bungling burglars. In “Bread and Tulips,� Rosalba must deal with a sudden lack of transportation, money and a mission in life. Wilson’s Burnett must outmaneuver the enemy and make tracks to a rescue site to stay alive. “Open Water’s� couple, Daniel and Susan Kintner (Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan), must contend with physical and psychological threats including dehydration, panic, stinging jellyfish and schooling sharks.

Resourcefulness is the key to the fate of any character who is left behind.

Culkin’s wee Kevin proves particularly adept at the game of survival. He raids his brother’s piggy bank for food money, uses the soundtrack from a gangster movie on the VCR to frighten a pizza delivery guy and the would-be thieves, and burglar-proofs his house by using everything from mannequins and ropes and pulleys to sizzling hot doorknobs, gluey basement stairs, falling irons and tar and feathers. Rosalba’s resourcefulness largely involves availing herself of the kindness of strangers, in particular, a dignified and courtly waiter who befriends her in Venice. “Behind Enemy Lines’s� Burnett uses Army-issue weapons and gizmos -- guns, radios, explosives -- to keep himself alive. The couple in “Open Water� have fewer resources but manage to use swim fins, weight belts and hard candies to pass the long hours.

Each left-behind character experiences a range of emotions before the trial ends. Culkin’s Kevin at first wanders his home, calling out for his family. Then it dawns on him that with everyone gone he can “eat junk and watch rubbish� to his heart’s content. But when burglars begin casing the joint, his glee turns to scream-your-head-off terror that only gradually evolves into courage.

In “Bread and Tulips,� Rosalba is initially stunned that her husband and sons could have departed without her. She has no money, no clothes and no means of catching up with the bus. She phones her husband, perhaps thinking he will manage the problem. But when he responds by yelling at her for missing the bus, she begins to wonder why she should return to him. When her agitation and compulsion to rejoin her family subside, her concern at being forgotten turns to excitement as she takes her first courageous steps toward a new life.

In “Behind Enemy Lines,� Wilson’s lieutenant, on grasping his predicament, vacillates between the Wilsonian brand of sardonic humor to panic and determination in the face of odds that do not favor his survival.

The vacationing husband and wife in “Open Water� initially express good-humored surprise when they surface to find their boat gone. They discuss their options and settle on waiting for the boat to return. But as the hours pass and the current carries them far from where they started, tension, fatigue, cold and fear give way to raw emotions including frustration, anger, panic and ultimately resignation.

The most successful left-behind films use the experience of being abandoned to work transformative magic on the principal character. At the start of “Home Alone,� Culkin’s Kevin is a pesky, mischievous and dependent kid, a youngest child accustomed to having others do everything for him. By the end, he is self-reliant, resourceful and courageous -- and he has repented his wish that his family would leave, going so far as to pray for their return.

In “Bread and Tulips,� the submissive, beaten-down housewife Rosalba gets out from under the brutish, selfish husband who defined her existence to become her own woman. She has experienced freedom, guilt, self-determination and kindness and is no longer the same woman. In “Behind Enemy Lines,� Wilson’s Burnett was all set to quit the military, bored as he was by assignments that kept him out of the action. “Open Water� does not wring changes on its principal characters, and the result is a film that feels a bit thin.

Cinematically speaking, the reality of being left behind lends itself to potent visual images. “Home Alone� director Chris Columbus crafts numerous shots of the young Culkin dwarfed by his surroundings or overmatched by the size of his opponents. In “Bread and Tulips,� Soldini shows scenes of the newly liberated Rosalba luxuriating in a room of her own. Moore’s “Behind Enemy Lines� gives us the lone Burnett outnumbered by the enemy and miles from help. And one of the best things about Kentis’ “Open Water� is the sense of the vast ocean with which he surrounds his characters.

Without words, each of the scenes conveys the sometime delights and terrors of being alone and adrift in the world. But whether a left-behind film works on all levels is secondary to the power of its starting point: Small or tall, alone or in a pair, with allies or without, equipped with resources or not, we all share a profound fear of being left behind.

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Deborah Hornblow is film critic at the Hartford Courant, a Tribune company.