When a film receives as many positive reviews and word-of-mouth mentions as Don't Look Up, I just have to watch it. An satirical allegory, ostensibly about a comet hurtling towards Earth, but clearly about climate change. And Covid-19. And Brexit. And Putin, Xi - any foreign threat to the West. That experts are warning us about, but to whom we pay no heed.
The film portrays the shallowness of contemporary society; glued to the social media apps on our smartphones, digesting the most moronic of news shows - there are strong parallels with the dystopian 2006 sci-fi movie, Idiocracy. As with Idiocracy, a key role is played by a populist US president, relating to the pig-shit-thick masses. The masses are to be kept pliant so the money elite can continue to enrich itself, and use the wealth to buy more and more power. The educated middle classes just get in the way.
They get in the way with their knowledge. About astrophysics, epidemiology, trade deals or geopolitics.
They get in the way of venal politicians (a lovely role scripted for the president's son, mirroring that of the Trump children) and of billionaire plutocrats. The politicians pour scorn on the experts' knowledge, with a dumbed-down media (content guided by audience-interaction algorithms) finding it easy to mock anyone appearing too intelligent in front of the cameras.
Don't Look Up deserves to be watched by everyone. It's message is clear - as a species, we've dumbed down too much for our own evolutionary good. We have become too stupid, too greedy, too complacent, to see existential risks, and casually we ignore them - by driving our SUVs to the office, wasting energy and natural resources, ignoring appeals to get vaccinated and wear a mask - and voting for ridiculously dangerous politicians.
Not the best of scripts (easy to poke holes in the narrative structure and character/plot devices), nevertheless it does constitute a robust criticism of the way we live today. And it's not just preaching to the converted; if the message does percolate upwards and downwards through society's structures, it will have done a power of good.
The film will quickly become memetic - I can already see tweets featuring photos of the newsdesk at the Daily Rip (the parody TV show) - and will pervade popular culture for decades. Or longer.
"We're 99.78% certain."
"Let's call it 70% and move on."
Quotable quotes cement a movie in popular culture. Just how much of Blues Brothers can you quote?
Stand back - Don't Look Up belongs to the Ages!
This time two years ago:
The Inequality Paradox - pt. 1
This time four years ago:
Warsaw's Christmas lights, 2017-18
This time 12 years:
Winter commuting in colour and black & white
This time 13 years ago:
Zamienie in winter
This time 14 years ago:
Really cold (-12C at night)
[last night's low: +5C]
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