Why, asked the lofty-minded, don’t the movies tackle the big issues of the day? So, what happens when you serve them up a star-studded, sizably budgeted, awards-hungry allegory about climate change? They moan.
Don’t Look Up is a self-declared parable devised to edify through comedy. Two astronomers, played by Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio, discover a “planet-killing” comet heading for Earth. They try to save the world, only to encounter opportunism in the White House, frivolity in the media, and commercial greed, incompetence, sexism, apathy and so forth everywhere else, all enacted by luminaries ranging from Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett to Mark Rylance, Tyler Perry and Ariana Grande.
Rightwing wiseacres were pretty much bound to dismiss such an exercise as puerile preaching by jetsetting Hollywood hypocrites; and indeed, the National Review managed to find Don’t Look Up both “moronic” and “brain-injuriously unfunny”, while the Wall Street Journal discerned only “glib nihilism” in a film that “oozes with self-delight”. Surprisingly, however, the progressive camp also found this apparent gift horse wanting. Its advocacy of their favourite cause was too “blunt” (Rolling Stone), too “shrill” (Parade) or too “bombastic” (the Observer). To put it another way, the New York Times, RogerEbert.com and, most pointedly, the Guardian all agreed that the film’s handling of its vital message was just too damn “obvious”.
Nonetheless, in the month after it dropped, Netflix subscribers spent 360m hours watching it, making its debut the second most successful in the streamer’s history. Were these untutored couch potatoes just too easy to please? Or might they have sensed accomplishment that their betters had somehow missed?
You can see why those with preconceived attitudes to the film’s subject-matter might have felt it parrots the obvious. Familiar villains, from self-seeking politicians to TV airheads and billionaire egomaniacs, perpetrate well-worn enormities. If you’re tired of blaming their ilk for our woes, or bored with seeing them blamed, you might well disengage at the outset. Yet though the film’s situations may be farcical, its characters aren’t the two-dimensional ciphers you might expect.
Streep’s Potus is the tale’s pivotal miscreant. To her, the mid-terms loom larger than an extinction-level event. Still, she’s no far-fetched ogre: in fact, she’s more believable than Donald Trump. Her self-interest somehow smacks of innocence rather than sinfulness, and she ends up lovable, rather than abhorrent. When cornered, she shocks with unexpected honesty. That kindness to animals should prove her Achilles’ heel seems tolerably apt.
Blanchett’s cable-news host is no less multifaceted, a maestro of banality on air, but elsewhere conveying depths with little more than a flick of an eyebrow. Rylance’s big-tech guru isn’t a plutocrat but a mystic who sees himself as a genius. Meanwhile, DiCaprio and Lawrence’s scientists are no heroic paragons.
Thus, the authors of our downfall emerge as engaging, relatable human beings rather than monsters. What’s more, the film’s rogues’ gallery includes one villain who’s all too often left out. It’s us. Ultimately, disaster turns out to require the inattention, triviality, ignorance, idiocy and tribalism of the people, not just the depravity of the privileged few they elect, enrich and idolise. In the end, it’s in the streets that the fate of the world is decided, by ordinary folk who don’t look up.
The implication of all this is that what really dooms humanity isn’t the malignity of power-brokers or the rottenness of institutions; it’s the innate qualities that make humanity human. Is that obvious? It may be to some. However, many prefer to blame whatever bogeymen they already happen to anathematise, be they the other side’s politicians, capitalism, wokery or original sin. Perhaps one or other of these whipping boys does indeed bear sole responsibility, but Don’t Look Up invites us all to reappraise our mindset.
Before settling on comedy as his vehicle, writer/director Adam McKay considered other ways of addressing his theme. He made the right choice. It’s humour that has given his message its peculiarly knowing edge. The search for gags led him away from dreary polemic and into the human heart. There he found that philosopher’s stone, entertainment that not only truly enlightens, but also enthrals the multitude.
This all too rare feat has been achieved on the back of a sparkling script, acting that earns its eye-watering recompense, adroit editing, meticulous design and an inspired score. Still, it’s not the kind of thing that excites the Academy’s voters. Sadly, Don’t Look Up won’t be snagging that Best Picture statuette. But it should.
