Netflix’s latest blockbuster Don’t Look Up recently broke the streaming services record for hours viewed in a week. In a continuous entertainment cycle where hardly anything stays trending for long, the film that was released before Christmas is making a good run of it. The reason it’s stayed at the top isn’t necessarily because it’s good; while fans have largely enjoyed the film, critics have panned its thinly-veiled allegory.
In this end of the world satire set in the not-too-distant future, scientists Robert Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discover a comet heading directly to earth. Despite earth’s impending doom, communicating the devastating news to the country’s leadership and society as a whole proves challenging. When they try to alert the president of the United States, their findings are dismissed — bad news may put a damper on the midterm elections. When they bring the news to the press, talk show hosts and outlets use the content to leverage clicks and views. When the silicon valley tech entrepreneur catches wind of the catastrophe, he actually wants to mine the comet for resources to use in his latest technology. NASA tries to destroy the comet, Dr. Mindy starts sleeping with a news anchor, and the president ends up using the comet for political gain. If you’re not exhausted yet, all of this happens in the first half of the movie!
Amid the political/environmental powder keg of Don’t Look Up is a blunt critique of technology and the fraying relationship in our culture. The battle lines are quickly drawn and McKay literally splits up his not so fictional society into the “Just Look Up” people who are trying to warn everyone of the comet and the “Don’t Look Up” people who refuse to look into the sky to see the ball of rock and fire speeding towards earth.
There’s a part of me that hoped McKay was doing something meta with this film. I imagined him assembling arguably the most decorated cast of all time, partnering with Netflix, drenching it in satire and then watching as audiences consumed content that was, in its creation, a critique of a culture that’s addicted to click-bait and big names and hot-button issues. But as the movie ran, my hopes diminished.
While Don’t Look Up is not without its laughs, it seemed like more of a platform for McKay to air his grievances. Which is, in it’s own way, ironic. One of McKay’s many critiques is that people don’t listen to one another. And yet most of Don’t Look Up feels like Adam McKay just yelling at people who disagree with him — a tactic that rarely produces real change.
The fruit is almost too low here not to grab, but I think the second most subliminal message to Don’t Look Up is that if we’re pushed hard enough, we all have an answer to what we believe will save the world. And the reason we can’t save the world is that “those people” aren’t on board with my idea of salvation. Don’t Look Up, like every other bad sermon (from the pulpit and all of it’s secular equivalents), puts the burden of responsibility on the viewer. And what you end up with is either guilty and anxious followers or zealous detractors.
Which leads me to the most subliminal message of Don’t Look Up: Yule. With all of the film’s buzz, there is hardly a hat tip in the reviews to Timothee Chalamet’s character named Yule. We’re introduced to Yule late in the film when he crosses paths with Kate Dibiasky in her hometown. In a movie where everyone is red-lining, the grungy skater boy from Wisconsin’s tact and humility stands in stark contrast. He’s funny, honest, and, in an unforeseen turn, possesses a robust faith. At the end of the movie, as the hysterical society braces for the comet quickly approaching, Yule tags along with Dibiasky to Dr. Mindy’s house for a humble dinner on earth’s last night. The frenetic speed of the film finally slows as the dinner guests eat, drink, and commune together. Before they break bread, Yule offers to pray. As I watched, I was ready for a general prayer to a general deity thanking it for family and friends. But instead, Yule offers this:
Dearest Father and Almighty Creator, we ask for your grace tonight, despite our pride.
Your forgiveness, despite our doubt. Most of all Lord, we ask for your love to soothe us through these dark times.
May we face whatever is to come in your divine will with courage and open hearts of acceptance. Amen.
The dinner party, full of warmth and free of technology, is a kind, albeit predictable juxtaposition to the rest of the film. But I’m still trying to figure out why McKay chose this prayer as the epilogue. For a movie that punches as hard as Don’t Look Up, what landed like a kiss on the cheek were these three lines. Don’t Look Up is tiring, but not because I felt a new burden for environmental issues, or grew in my distrust of news sources, or was discouraged by the political culture. Watching caricatured versions of people hell-bent on being right is exhausting. It makes me wonder how tired McKay felt after finishing it. Maybe tired enough to wave the white flag of defeat in the form of a prayer, admitting that maybe salvation was never really in our hands to begin with. I find it hopeful that what we get as the earth explodes is a plea of confession and a petition for comfort and courage. And with this prayer on the tongues of the weary and worn out, there is certainly hope for us still.
