Don't Look Up

Don't Look Up is a biting satire and, worth the watch despite negative reviews. It's a compelling portrait of how a corrupt state in collusion with powerful corporations wilfully ignores the consequences of climate change. It's a frightening , disturbing and depressing picture of how the very powers who polluted the environment are not, despite having all the resources and opportunity, doing anything about it but instead acting on short term political gains or greed for profits. 

It's such a definitive picture of American politics and society for some objective moments in the film. But shockingly, mostly,  it's a very political intentional stab at Trump and Trumpism. There is Meryl Streep impersonating a female Trump.  She's orange, she's vulgar, she lies, she stages huge Trumpian rallies, she is dumb, she isn't elegant and knowledgeable like Hillary Clinton and so on. There is Jonah Hill, playing her son , who runs the White House and picks petty arguments with scientists. 

Is Don't Look Up a satire about climate change or Trump? It might as well have been a film about Trump's handling of Covid19. 

Using climate change to make a satirical film about Trumpism is ultimately a cheap ploy. We need a much a wider analysis of how climate change has failed to bring about definitive and moral action from the political class in the United States . We will need an intelligent satire to show how the American Empire is very good at making war but to save the world for democracy but not to save the world from climate change. We need an honest cinematic look at how climate change is not on any real agenda of the Powers That Be. We need an honest look at how environmental desecration is being pursued at break-neck speed because recycling is a sham, because oil pipelines are being constructed across Indigenous lands, because powerful corporations have their interested protected in the very halls of democracy. 

The film does do a faintly good job at showing how apathetic the public is, engrossed in their social media and celebrity news. There is also the caricature of American television , perhaps a dig at Fox News, and is presented as such a moral cesspool that the very scientist trying to bring attention to the comet that will bring about a mass extinction in 6 months is literally seduced by an American TV host. The caricature of this American TV host played by Cate Blanchett (another actor I'm literally sick of because she has to be everywhere) is done to perfection: ridiculous white teeth, an obnoxious perfect-white-teeth smile,  and a vulgar dumb personality. 

Who is this dumb male scientist who so willingly jumps into bed with this obnoxious TV host , forgetting all his good morals, his wonderful wife and family? None other than Leonardo DiCaprio, who in real life too can't find a partner his own age , lives apparently a moral life, crusading for the planet , but yet living the Imran-Khan-in-London-playboy life at the same time. These types of men  with deeply flawed lives think they have the qualifications to save the world.  So anyway, this de-railed scientist eventually finds his way back to sanity and his younger colleague who actually discovered the comet and has not once swayed from focus, never trades fame and political office for her principles, played by Jennifer Lawrence. 

I'm not a big Jennifer Lawrence fan. In fact I find her annoying but she probably plays the most bearable character in this movie. 

Disdain of Trumpism overwhelms this movie. It takes it so far as to say Trumpism was so evil and dumb, she would leave her own dumb son to be blown up by a comet as she cowardly flees Earth along with a greedy tech billionaire in a spaceship. 

Meanwhile, the good scientists , including Leonardo forgiven by his wife for his affair, and family hold hands over a dinner table as Earth is hit by the comet. 

Planet Earth could have been easily saved if it had followed Plan A (destroy the comet with a nuclear weapon) but the Tech Billionaire convinced the President to turn the nuclear war head around last minute , hatching a Plan B to harvest precious minerals from the comet first and then blow it up. Unfortunately, Plan B didn't work because this Tech Billionaire's technology didn't work and, he and the President escape in a space ship, landing on a planet thousands of years later and waking up from cryo sleep are gobbled up by dinosaur-looking creatures. 

Yes, I started this post with recommending this film but at the tail end of this endeavour, I find myself really worked up against it. 

Don't Look Up is a Hollywood collusion with a Democrat agenda to throw more dirt at Trump and his legacy, merely using climate change as a tool.  Instead of a making a satire to put a lens on all aspects of the political-industrial-empire machinery vis a vis climate change, it merely uses Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett to create obnoxious caricatures to poke fun at Trump and Fox News. 

PS. By the way, why didn't they include Melania in this adorable jibe at Trump?