Don’t look up! Humanity is down there and this is where the action is. That is the blunt, if not atrociously funny message of Don’t Look Up, the hit new film from Netflix.
One cannot even consider this a cautionary tale because a narrative that warns of an impending apocalypse typically takes on at least a somber tone. But this film from the get-go does not really take itself seriously—from the scientist who sells his brain and soul to the Devil (i.e. lust and fame) to a bright PhD candidate who is hysterical down to the President and the media. Or why would the screenplay make them huge caricatures if the purpose of this film is to alert us of what has been predicted all along—that human beings will be the death of humanity, and that the cycle of life really does not mean we people will be always at the top of heap?
At the core of Don’t Look Up is the discovery by two astronomers of a comet moving in the direction of the Earth. This seems to be a common scientific fact and we find out the powerful governments in our planet have the means to stop and destroy such an extraterrestrial body. There were cases already in the past of said bodies hurling themselves down to our surfaces but the effects had been negligible. But this time, Dr. Randall Mindy and his student Kate Dibiasky, a doctoral candidate in astronomy, have a more startling realization: the comet spells the end of human civilization.
They have to tell someone and that someone has to be the person that can make the prime decision on what to do. The two astronomers need to see their president. But to go to the president, who is a woman, they have to pass through a bureaucracy called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is headed by Dr. Oglethorpe.
Facing the president, Dr. Mindy and Ms. Dibiasky will encounter a politician who is worried of the impact this would have on the next election more than on the planet. President Janie Orlean would tell them to sit tight and assess, which, in the face of an impending doomsday, is nothings short of stupid. But politicians, as we know them, are so clueless morally that any stupid act is bound to be seen as a lustrous strategy.
It takes a long time for the White House to come to its “assessment” and go into action—to destroy the comet. As soon as the plan is in place, however, a tech billionaire enters the scene. He has other plans: to blow the meteor into manageable and useful bits and pieces; the comet has an economic value after all.
Along the way, Dr. Mindy becomes more popular and leaner. His beard gets a trim and he becomes a sex symbol/poster boy for science. This development is an amusing metaphor about the mass media and its desire to turn all things into user-friendly units. Make research digestible. Turn science into a sexy material.
This brings us to the real nature of this film—it is a kind of upgraded commedia dell’arte, where the characters are accessible because they are stock. You have the rulers and lovers, the Fool and the Ordinary Man. There are no gray characters: everything is in black and white.
The President is corrupt and dim-witted. What makes her seductive is that she is played by Meryl Streep. You don’t look for great acting in that role if good performance warrants nuances. You demand a sort of delicious romp and Streep is just too willing to serve it to us. And so is the media represented by Brie Evantee, host of the TV show The Daily Rip, here played with as much gusto and salaciousness by Cate Blanchett. Over-the-top, these personifications lose a delicacy but who cares about laces and ribbons, pastels and sunshine, the world is coming to an end and our governments and sources of information care only about their survival.
If there is a sweetly duplicitous character in this film, one who chews the scenes, it is Mark Rylance as Peter Isherwell, the CEO of the giant tech firm aiming to tap the wealth of the comet. He is also one of President Orlean’s top donors and therefore has her ears.
I am not a fan of Jennifer Lawrence but how she survives her eccentric kookiness at the start of the film converts me into an admirer. She has this sense of daring and wonderment that both look real in this fantastic science fiction. When she meets Yule, played by a subtle Timothée Chalamet, then we have two young people we can be hopeful with.
Not everything is a parade of caricatures and a display of the carnivalesque in Don’t Look Down, which was written, produced and directed by Adam McKay. There is a grain of truth in how in the world of authorities, leaders wrangle for the spotlight. That even science—or maybe because it is science—has to fight fake news. There is freshness in the presentation of the life on this planet being terminal and it is in the claim that we—our society, our human group—have indeed an end. Believe me, not even halfway through the film, with all those characters, I was wishing Earth be destroyed by Comet Dibiasky.
By the way, Ariana Grande is in this movie. Why? I do not know. What I know is she is not the comet.