(Contains spoilers, and more than a review)
My phone beeped one night, a text alert from my peeps group – five of my oldest, smartest, and most trusted friends.
“Watch the movie Don’t Look Up. Netflix.”
“Brilliant.”
“I just watched. Loved it.”
The next morning on Facebook, from another friend I trust:
“Is DON’T LOOK UP the worst movie you’ve ever seen or what?”
And another: “DON’T LOOK UP. BEST MOVIE OF 2021. ON NETFLIX.”
And on and on.
So I checked it out. At first, not in one sitting.
Don’t Look Up is a satire on the world we live in, abustle in a youthful, overstimulating SNL comedic style that’s popular but not everyone’s cuppa. The story is pending apocalypse.
Michigan State astronomers Randall Mindy (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a comet bound to devastate the earth in six months. When they get word to the White House and press, they are met with disbelief, derision, and lots of white teeth. The POTUS (Meryl Streep), her Chief of Staff, who is also her son (Jonah Hill), and their entourage and fans depict the MAGA crowd with an overtness that is sure to offend Trumpers but divides the rest of the audience generally into those who find it a welcome comment on where we are, and those who feel it’s too close to home to be funny.
The first time I watched the movie, with interruptions, I felt jerked around. I found the placement of some performances extremely awkward, such as the little girl professing her love to tech billionaire Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance). The brassy Vegas soundtrack, neon block lettering, frequent and fast insults, and hashtags zipping across the screen were unnerving. These moments would be interspersed with serene nature scenes, à la David Attenborough, that I felt deserved a better emotional response from me. Maybe the problem was, as Roger Ebert asserts, that they were stock images. But something felt slightly dishonest, even shallow. On first viewing.
I enjoyed the absurdity of some of the quirky gags, like Dibiasky’s obsessing over why the general charged her for snacks in the White House, that the head of NASA was a former anesthesiologst, the Chief of Staff’s prayer for “stuff.” But of course here we see satire of a reality that’s already absurd. Is our response to be amused or disturbed? Or both?
“The idea,” according to writer/director Adam McKay, “was always that it was going to involve absurdist comedy and some reality — can you blend those two things?”
Tall order.
By the time I made it to the actual apocalypse, specifically a scene filmed in Dr. Mindy’s home, I knew I had to watch the movie again without interruption. Because at this point I was genuinely moved. And that surprised me.
It didn’t hurt that two of my favorite actor/characters were in the scene. Melanie Lynskey plays Dr. Mindy’s wife as a woman who knows both how to keep it together and the meaning of grace. I wanted to hug her. Speaking of grace, my other favorite is Timothée Chalomet as Yule, the skateboard-toting closet evangelical. A favorite moment for me was Yule with his buddies working hard to convince Dibiasky (by now a scorned celebrity) that they think she’s cool, crying “YO!!” into his phone with her frowning behind them. Another was his zealous reaction to fingerling potatoes. A grateful shoutout to Hollywood for veering off the usual course by depicting an evangelical (former, conflicted, whatever, at least genuine) in a sympathetic light. Chalomet’s part in this late scene was everything for me.
The scene (pause reading to avoid a detailed spoiler): When they know the world is about to end, and that there’s nothing else to be done, the good guys stop panicking. They gather with their family and friends around the dinner table. They talk about what makes good coffee and how the store-bought pie doesn’t taste store-bought. They talk about what they’re grateful for. Someone asks for a prayer, but nobody’s religious. Yule steps in, with a simple, sincere prayer that would work for any Southern Baptist and probably any Unitarian. As the table begins to shake they tighten their grips on each other’s hands but otherwise try to hold onto the last bits of normal, continuing the light conversation about nothing in particular, their faces full of tenderness and concern more for each other than themselves. Dr. Mindy delivers my favorite line of the movie.
“We really did have everything, didn’t we?”
It’s how I would want to go out.
Then to have such a moment broken by the yuk yuk phone with the diet app hurdling through space. Back to…reality?
On second viewing, I had to ask if the movie’s helter skelter nature beforehand led to that dinner table moment and made it work even more for me. I hate to admit that, because I didn’t want to like the movie.
I won’t comment here on the final final, as I’ve given away enough already. But know that the end of the world is not the end of the movie. Keep watching through final credits.
As far as stars go, I’d have gone with no-name actors for both astronomers, especially Jennifer Lawrence’s character. Both rose to the occasion, and I might agree with Ebert that DiCaprio’s Sesame Street explosion (screaming, “YOU’RE ALL GONNA DIE!” at kids) made him the right man for the role. But having these unknown scientists who fight to be taken seriously played by unknown actors would have made them more credible for me, and probably more interesting. Cate Blanchett’s Brie Evantee, news anchor on (Fox? MSNBC?) spoof “The Rip,” was too fabulous to be constrained by the limitations of courtesy or morals and bored by everything. I’ve seen speculation that her role is based on Megan Kelly, but with her pressed-layrnx vocal delivery, her presence in the White House inner circle, and even a Dartmouth reference, I see more Laura Ingraham.
The one celebrity who consistently made me forget her star status was the biggest legend – Streep, who inhabited her character completely. A crass, smartly dressed, cigarette-smoking concoction of Trump, Hilary Clinton, Palin, and Coulter, she borrowed from all and came up with her own hilarious, self-congratulating, reckless ego. Jonah Hill, master of a particular kind of rude improvisational humor, left me in constant squirmy discomfort. Rylance (“widely regarded as the greatest stage actor of his generation”) was wonderfully creepy whether he evoked Musk, Bezos, or Zuckerberg. Ariana Grande was the ripe cherry on top. A friend has just told me that cramming in all these celebrities was in homage to 70s disaster movies. Thanks for that tidbit, Deb.
This is why I have no business writing movie reviews.
And now I shift to my objection to the movie.
“Don’t Look Up” lampoons an already absurd reality, expressing the head-exploding frustration people feel at their warnings of avoidable disaster being ignored. The high voltage atmosphere seems at times to celebrate its own success (in being right?). But the point of the movie is to wake people up to the dangers of political disfunction and climate change. If you doubt that, just visit writer and director Adam McKay’s Twitter feed, or writer David Sirota‘s.
Or listen to an interview with DiCaprio.
Or, as some have asserted with less tact, it’s about how stupid people are.
One climate scientist wrote, “It’s funny and terrifying because it conveys a certain cold truth that climate scientists and others who understand the full depth of the climate emergency are living every day. I hope that this movie, which comically depicts how hard it is to break through prevailing norms, actually helps break through those norms in real life.”
I really feel for him, but how would that breaking through work exactly?
Remember the dinner scene, as the characters were trying to hold onto the last bits of normal? Isn’t that our default setting? Maybe like me you bought Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death a while ago but still haven’t mustered the energy to read it. We can barely imagine, much less face, our own mortality. How much harder to grapple with the end of civilization? No matter the evidence and data, arguments will be resisted, strongly and convincingly, by those who want to believe otherwise. And with this kind of messaging, those numbers will increase, not decrease.
The reason so many of us don’t accept climate change science (and the pandemic) is that we are caught up in our daily lives and it’s hard enough to accept our mortality. Denial is a natural protective response against stress. And it’s rampant. But for those of us who profess to accept the science and claim to be on board, what do we change when our strategies to convince others fail? Who do you know that has been awakened by being told they were stupid? Is it possible that in mocking the deniers we are having our own party, lolling in our own stupor, perhaps to quell our own fear?
“Don’t Look Up” reminded me of another of Adam McKay’s films, “The Big Short,” which I found entertaining and eye-opening but at the same time was put off by a whiff of, “Look how cool and clever we are.”
I’m not sure how to get around this. At times it seems to me like just real-deal coolness and cleverness. But at other times I detect a self-conscious righteousness that repels me and makes my Trust-o-meter start to shimmy. And here is where I think we have a problem.
If this activates an alert in the trust gauge of someone who is pretty heterodox (to put it simply) and even in agreement with the point of view that as a culture we are dangerously ignoring scientists, how much more would it turn off a climate change denier?
Or, as KMUW’s Fletcher Powell writes, “Yelling ‘Look at all the dumb-dumbs’ cannot be the basis for successful satire.”
Amanda Ripley says it best in her book High Conflict: “if you try to humiliate your opponent, you’re handing them a weapon.”
Some of you are rolling your eyes – here she goes again, urging us to reach out, always putting the burden on us.
Bear with me.
The Human Element by Loran Nordgren and David Schonthal compares our overcoming resistance to ideas to a bullet’s overcoming drag, the air resistance it meets after it exits the barrel. The bullet needs more than the propulsive explosion in the gun to keep going. Once it exits the chamber it needs to be made aerodynamic, more efficient, in order to move through the drag. Nordgren shares a story of trying to convince his 90-year-old father to get a cell phone. The more data he shares about the benefits, the stronger his pop resists. The approach most of us use – pushing article after article, talking more than listening, not only turns people off but results in their digging in their heels. So not only does it fail to meet our stated objective, but it works against it.
In the movie Dr. Mindy, about to make a TV appearance, hears advice on overcoming resistance from Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (lovingly played by Rob Morgan):
“No math.”
“But it’s all math.” (Don’t they just want more facts?)
Of course no-one blows it more than Dibiasky, who says to the President, “I didn’t vote for you. But.. I will be 100% behind this effort. No matter how offensive I may find you.”
Her comment is received as you might imagine. Jonah Hill’s character talks about putting a bag over her head.
It almost seems McKay and Sirota poke fun even at their own efforts to get the message out. We all stink at this, don’t we?
The movie still serves a purpose. Satire (Randy Rainbow, Sarah Cooper), laughing as we look at our problems, helps ease stress. That’s worth something.
But in this crisis I don’t see how we can get around the fact that we need each other.
I’ve sketched out a few ideas on approaches. If you’ll pardon a brief digression from the movie, I’ll share, and welcome your thoughts.
Until then, suffice to say by my third watch I loved this movie, maybe thanks to my husband’s hearty laughter. For the record, three teenage boys also watched. One said it may be the best movie he’d ever seen, another gave it high marks, and the third felt disturbed by it.
I love “Don’t Look Up.” I just don’t believe they made it for the reasons they say they did. If so, I hope they’ll rethink their methods because these will backfire.
Come to think of it, the movie must have served another purpose. I feel energized to do something. For now I’ll focus on taking the advice I’m shelling out.
SOME STRATEGIC THOUGHTS:
- Find those who have changed their minds on these issues. Highlight their stories.
- Harness the power of communities who resist now but could be empowered in the opposite direction. Like the American evangelical Christian community. Evangelical climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe says Christians should be leading the charge to protect our planet. The New York Times calls her new book Saving Us – a Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World “an optimistic view on why collective action is still possible—and how it can be realized.” Francis Collins’ Biologos and other organizations like Creationcare are doing good work on this kind of effort. As the Psalmist writes, “deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls.” What a difference we can make if we get this influential community on board!
- Consider the best advice on dealing with people in crisis. This is a collective crisis. A world crisis. Our collective subconscious is bound to freak out. We can’t expect each other always to find easy access to our best reason. We may see a lot of monkey mind – fight or flight, amygdala-type thinking (see how scientific I sound here?). Do we have a collective amygdala? I don’t know, but it seems like it. We can handle this better.
- Use art to remind each other of how wonderful our planet is!!! It’s way better than Mars! Music, visual art, photography, dance, theater, literature – how much can these remind us of all we have to enjoy and care for.
- Get serious about cleaning up our media, especially social media. Get out of our silos and talk to each other. Check out organizations like Braver Angels – where the best conversations are taking place, face to face.
- Your turn. Please share.
Tyler Perry’s “The Daily Rip” anchor says, “It helps the medicine go down.” It was satire, but Mary Poppins was no idiot. We are, after all, just stubborn children on the inside.
I’ll close with perhaps the wisest words I’ve seen written on the subject of the movie “Don’t Look Up,” delivered by some kid on Twitter:
We really do have everything, don’t we?
