‘Don’t Look Up’, is controversial.
It was meant to be controversial.
People thinking otherwise are fooling themselves, just like some of the characters in the movie.
Our world is very divided at the moment. There are cracks in every society, every country and around the globe. ‘Don’t Look Up’ took a very serious look at this, within the parameter of a deep satire, that some people may not find funny, ironically.
‘Don’t Look Up’ is a very ambitious project. It tried to address a lot of different aspects impacting our society under the premise that we are running out of time. The urgency of that 6 months available in the story reflected how twisted humanity can become, and how twisted our current society had also become.
The premise of the movie is straightforward. The comet of the size of Mount Everest is heading towards Earth in a direct collision course. There are only 6 months left to mitigate it to save humanity from extinction. However, instead of everyone pulling their weights together, the scientists who discovered the comet found themselves on a collision course with the government, the politicians, the billionaires, and a whole bunch of conspiracy theorists left and right. When human extinction is now a matter of political power and image building, self-comforting conspiracy theories used by various people to forward their own agenda, and multi-trillion business plans for billionaires to make more money, what else is left for humanity to be saved?
Apart from the larger divides, the movie also dealt with ground level issues. For example, how some of those scientists are painfully lacking in communication skills, how a pure intention can become so twisted on different levels, how personal sacrifices could mean so little to people you sacrifice yourself for. They might all sound dire and depressing, but then within the parameter of this satire, it keeps you engaged while the characters kept you extremely annoyed at times. The truth is, in my opinion, it is because of the annoyance that it created that you felt the power of this satire. People might think that satire is just for pure laughter, but for me a satire meant more than that, it is a sadistic look at our society and magnifying the short comings of our society and people. It could end up in laughter, but it could also end up in tears, because what we saw became so ironically sad within the context of our society.
‘Don’t Look Up’ is a star-studded affair. From Leonardo Di Caprio to Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet to Ariana Grande etc., they all put up a performance that fit their roles. Of course, the main storyline was with Leonardo Di Caprio and Jennifer Lawrence, the scientists who discovered the comet, and turned from initial excitement to the dire warning and bad news bearer for mankind. The journey they went through were two extremes. Some of the events were their own making, probably not very sympathetic in my opinion, nonetheless it was a very raw reflection of how they would react and respond under the circumstance. When their pure intention to save humanity mutated into something else, there were only two choices – either to go along hoping to do something good along the way, or to give up and let things unfold.
There may be people who could never understand what ‘Don’t Look Up’ is about, but if you look closer, you will see it is reflection of our society within the reflection of a movie within a movie. For me, what it was trying to tell us is, there is only one truth. However, our society is marred by white noise that could be detrimental to the reality reflected by the truth. It is not about the elite left or right, but about the truth itself. How you want to interpret the truth will never change the truth itself. Whatever choice you made about this truth will always have consequences, if you made a choice, make sure you are ready for the consequence. Truth is apathetic to your choices, if the truth is about heading towards an extinction, whichever side you take, the consequence will always be the extinction, unless you did something to tackle the truth head on to change the course of history.
I don’t expect everyone to understand ‘Don’t Look Up’ as I did. But I think it is a good movie to remind us that we should plough through all the white noise around us and look at the truth as a simple existence itself, be it the pandemic we are in, or climate change and global warning. The choice is yours, but the truth never changes.
‘Don’t Look Up’ is now streaming on Netflix.
