Highly Recommended Film: Don't Look Up

After hearing about this new film on Netflix from different sources, last night my husband and I sat down and watched Don't Look Up. It left me stunned with its interwoven horrors, hilarity, heartbreak, and deep and urgent relevance to our times. The below is one review by Arun Gupta, who I agree with — We all need to see Don't Look Up. — Molly

You need to see "Don't Look Up." It's not the funniest movie, though it has its moments. It's not the best acted and criminally underutilizes Jennifer Lawrence, despite a stellar cast. It's not the best written, missing moments ripe for brutal repartee that Succession has raised to an art form.

But it is one of those exceedingly rare Hollywood movies that deftly satirizes the utter insanity of American politics and never lets its foot off the gas pedal while maintaining a light tone.

I am not giving away spoilers, nothing you can't see in the trailers or is revealed early in the film. Streep and Jonah Hill are obvious stand-ins for the Trump family, a cesspool of venality, cynicism, and opportunism. One of the best acted characters is Mark Rylance's soft-spoken Silicon Valley CEO with a God-complex, a combination of Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, who drives much of the plot. Cate Blanchett shines as the glamorous cynical face of mainstream news that is little more than manipulative clickbait entertainment.

Don't Look Up ties these elements together — the state, corporations, and our information ecosystem — to accurately represent what would happen if a planet-killing comet was headed straight at earth. Every policy decision is refracted through polls, political advantage, and show business. Even the august legacy media, a thinly veiled New York Times, dances to the same tune. Its editorial decisions determined by memes, social media, and engagement.

With a story written by Adam McKay and David Sirota, Don't Look Up is what can be termed sociological filmmaking. It doesn't matter what the small people do, represented by the two scientists played by Lawrence and DiCaprio. Their choices are either to join the corrupt system or drop out. Attempts to warn the world, to impel action, to work inside the system are crushed under a juggernaut of self-interested disinformation by elites who have captured the levers of power.

Don't Look Up is a latter-day Dr. Strangelove, even if it doesn't hold up to Kubrick's masterpiece. It's a terrifying message swaddled in comedy about the consequences of the path we are hurtling down. There are subtle but deft political observations that when the entire planet is threatened, as with climate change, only states have the power and resources to address the monumental forces at work, and genteel protest, no matter how righteous, is ultimately ineffectual in the face of the unholy trinity of the capitalist state, media, and corporate power.

Plus for the sharp-eyed it has a hilarious use of the Wall Street Bull. And pay close attention to ending, which has an ensemble composed of exactly the type of ghouls you would expect in such a scenario.

 

— Arun Gupta