Don’t Look Up
This challenging film gives an ugly depiction of life in our country today.
Two scientists played by Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence spot a comet heading directly for Earth. The same event exterminated most of life on our planet at the time of the dinosaurs. They seek only to get government involved to try and prevent catastrophe.
Yet you will be astonished to learn that Director Adam McKay turns this horrifying drama into a blistering comedy. Despite undeniable facts presented by our two scientists, who in our beloved country will believe anything today?
The President, played as if she is a female Donald Trump by Meryl Streep, is more interested in her popularity than warning the country. With the help of a wealthy phone magnate (Mark Rylance), who resembles the My Pillow blowhard Michael Lindell, she preferred to encourage working class Americans to reject science and help her wealthy supporters get richer.
The press and TV turn on DiCaprio and Lawrence with a vengeance. They are both vilified, and a TV News Anchor played by Cate Blanchett seduces DiCaprio as if she were a female Bill O’Reilly. Their argument that life on Earth was facing extinction was dismissed in the same fashion that the Trump supporters claim that a bogus voting scandal cost him reelection.
Quite frankly, this film functions as a penetrating metaphor on how social media is functioning as a comet destroying our democracy. As an example, think how Fox News advocates that the January 6 insurrection was nothing more than a garden party while Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity sent texts to White House aide Mark Meadows to have Trump stop the chaos. Even they knew that Trump was the leader of this gang.
This movie warns us that a domestic comet is coming if we don’t find a way to embrace each other as brothers and sisters. People still don’t get vaccines and the COVID virus is spreading. People oppose abortion while doing nothing about guns as cities like Indianapolis experience record homicides. It’s as if the right to life ends at birth.
This movie should be seen, even by you Fox News fans.
