Don't Look Up: a different take
Comments2020sPhil HearseThe publication's own web text.
Editor's note. Posted under Ian Parker's review of Adam McKay's film Don't Look Up, released on Netflix on 24 December 2021. Parker read the film as a satire which, at points, falls into the traps satire has to avoid, collapsing from a critical approach into “postmodern pastiche”. The comment answers him. It was posted under the name “Pjil Hearse”.
I have a different take on this to Ian’s.
Make a movie with mainstream stars that has radical or critical content, then you are going to get rubbished. Especially in the American media, where newspaper reviews typically have headlines like ‘Another Movie Director Lost to Radicalism.’ Two reviews in the UK Guardian, which are virtually identical, imply the humour is spoiled by the radicalism. But don’t belie be a word of it. This is a great movie, even if, as Brian Lowry puts it, it’s a ‘scathing critique that occasionally veers off course.’
I thought the movie’s humour was passable, but the key points that the movie is making are the following:
1) Mainstream politicians are totally cynical and are mainly concerned with their own, or their party’s, interests.
2) Much of the so-called ‘news’ media, especially in the United States, is mainly concerned with celebrity trivia and not with serious matters that threaten humanity, which they often make fun of.
3) Social media is often swamped with right wing insanity and memes that seize on secondary issues to swamp radicalism or science.
4) Right-wing demagogues whip up significant sections of the US population on an irrationalist basis. And British.
5) Social media moguls have disproportionate power, almost untrammelled, and frequently used for reactionary end.
I agree with a lot of Ian’s points, but for me the key thing is that here we have a movie with a critical social message, with mainstream stars who will attract viewers, it’s on Netflix so it will get a lot of views and it’s funny. And the ending is totally ridiculous, but so what?
There us no ‘correct’ line in reviewing mainstream movies, and everyone can have a view of it. The main thing is to get people watching it. So, Ian, would you vote for this movie being shown on BBC in a prime time slot? You said ‘yes’ I’m sure. Which (sort of) proves my point.