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Don't Look Up
Don't Look Up
When a cinematic asteroid hurled toward Earth in Armageddon, Bruce Willis assembled a crew of space-ready roughnecks and saved the world. That was 1998. In Don’t Look Up, a comet is discovered six months before impact with our planet—and it’s politically and socially divisive. Has the U.S. lost that can-do spirit, that unity of purpose?
Don’t Look Up brilliantly satirizes contemporary America, cutting so close to the truth that it’s almost a documentary with the names changed to shield the producers from lawsuits. Laughter of recognition ripples from start to finish. Astronomy Prof. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and postgraduate student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) spot the new speck of light in the night sky and do the math: it’s only six months and 14 days until the mountain-size comet plunges into the Pacific, triggering mile-high tsunamis, cataclysmic earthquakes and mass extinction.
The science is clear, NASA’s Dr. Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) agrees. However, the feckless president (Meryl Streep) ignores the danger, then capitalizes politically on her “mobilization” response only to do an about face into denial. Substitute COVID or climate change for the comet and the meaning is clear.
Writer-director Andy McKay (who got his start on SNL) had fun shaping the story from the wet clay of the endless news cycle. Madam President isn’t modelled on Hilary Clinton but Donald Trump. She holds noisy open-air rallies, ginning up resentment against the elites by turning catastrophe into a wedge issue. “They want you to look up [at the increasingly visible comet] because they are looking down their noses at you!” she insists. The cheering faces in her crowd wear red hats with the slogan: DON’T LOOK UP. Reality be damned.
Don’t Look Up pulls another switch with tech titan Peter Isherwell (Milwaukee rooted Mark Rylance), CEO of a cellphone corporation whose latest model identifies your emotional state and recommends (in purring Siri tones) the nearest therapist. He’s less Steve Jobs than Elon Musk, a visionary of galactic ambition. He believes the comet contains elements vital to manufacturing microchips and wants to exploit the disaster to create a profitable utopia.
Don’t Look Up spoofs just about everything going in contemporary life. Tyler Perry and Cate Blanchett are dead-on as the cheery hosts of a morning TV show; Ariana Grande is spot-on as a vacuous pop star living her personal life in public; and Ron Perlman is right-on as the idiot version of Bruce Willis, the gruff talking “hero” who fails to save the world. When Randall and Kate appear on TV, her fervor to tell the truth triggers backlash on social media (the digital shame mob gathers for blood, or at least a bloody meme) while Randall’s more composed demeanor wins a higher level of “engagement.”
In any event, the public pays only half-attention, hooked to the trivial flow on their cellphones like junkies to their fix. And when a segment of the public sees the bad news, some of them protest and others descend into mindless rioting. Families are divided. “How do you know there is a comet?” asks a Republican senator with a straight face. Polls show that a quarter of Americans believe it’s all a hoax. As tweeted by one devotee to alternative facts, “Jewish billionaires invented this comet so they can confiscate our liberty and our guns.” Fox News is satirized and so are PBS children’s shows. In an advertising blitz paid for by Isherwell, a concerned mom is assured that the comet will bring jobs. On the other hand, politicians claim that the comet will send a new wave of immigrants to our southern border.
It’s all there: Don’t Look Up is the whirlwind madness of 2020 amped up only a little.
The cast is marvelous, down to the smallest part. DiCaprio disappears into his role as the amiable, scruffy science nerd. Lawrence is wonderfully expressive, her eyes registering frustration, anger, sadness and, finally, peace. Timothée Chalamet arrives late in the film as one of the story’s better lights, the religious skateboarder who befriends the widely despised Kate. And Rylance is unforgettable in the stammering self-confidence, the mild-mannered megalomania of the tech titan. In the end, Don’t Look Up affirms the possibility of love and companionship in a world where plain facts are denied and lies embraced as articles of faith.
