Don’t Look Up first published by Sight and Sound
When Michigan family man and astronomy professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) first realises what is coming, he spends the night checking and rechecking the calculations, and is quick, the following day, to call the White House with the bad news. Mindy’s urgency matches the speed of the Everest-sized Comet Dibiasky – named for its discoverer PhD student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) – which is hurtling on a cataclysmic collision course with Earth.
This introduction to Don’t Look Up might sound like the set-up for a spectacular global disaster movie like Meteor (1979), Sudden Impact (1983), Armageddon (1998), The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and 2012 (2009) – or the politically disengaged ‘popcorn’ blockbuster Total Devastation included within the film itself by way of reflexive contrast. In fact Adam McKay’s feature comes closer to Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove (1964) or Mike Judge’s Idiocracy (2006) – an epic lampoon of a dumbed-down America incapable, in a crisis, of acting with wisdom or even timeliness. Here the ‘famously late’ POTUS Janie Orlean (Meryl Streep), with her drugged-up Chief of Staff son (Jonah Hill) and her campaigning hat (its motto of denial: ‘Don’t Look Up’), is an obvious if regendered Trump figure, while affectless corporate CEO and tech guru Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), with his dead eyes to the skies, is a clear composite of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos. “They’re not even smart enough to be as evil as you’re giving them credit for,” Dibiasky will conclude of these recognisable power players.
In McKay’s satire, metaphors are made flesh. Explaining the astronomical data on television, Mindy is interviewed by a literal muppet. When he becomes co-opted as the sexed-up public face of bad science, Mindy’s seduction involves him literally getting into bed with the media – specifically, with TV anchor Brie Avantee (Cate Blanchett), who insists that he tell her “We’re all going to die” as part of his foreplay. “You’re with the grown-ups now,” President Orlean will inform Mindy, as she literally lights a cigarette in front of a “flammable” sign. As this apocalyptic story gets chopped into a multiplicity of memes, reports, ads, online chats and uploads, the medium becomes the message, revealing how easily our own hunger for mindless entertainment, instant gratification and celebrity trivia (in a film rammed with celebrities) can divert our attention from the reality of our species’ imminent annihilation. Even that barrelling comet is merely palatable cinematic cover for the film’s true subject, the coming climate catastrophe. This is broad, crass, scattergun comedy – but that fairly reflects the age of distraction being so grimly targeted.
strap: Adam McKay’s scattergun satire shows a dumbed-down America too distracted by media, trivia and celebrity to see what is coming
Anton Bitel
