Even though “Don’t Look Up” doesn't hold the fine texture of a great cinema, it is a good cinema
“Don’t Look Up” debuted on Netflix on December 24, 2021| Collected
Sumaya Mashrufa
Publish : 03 Jan 2022, 07:16 PMUpdate : 03 Jan 2022, 07:16 PM
PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky discovers a comet, and later by the calculation of Dr Randall Mindy, it is confirmed that the comet is hurtling towards the earth and will hit the planet in about 6 months and 14 days. When that scenario presents itself, it doesn't necessarily dawn that the hardest part will be to convince the government to take immediate action to diverge the comet's course. Or that the task will also inevitably include making people believe that there is a comet.
This is the beginning of the movie “Don’t Look Up.”
If “Don’t Look Up” was a straight-up drama, it would be much harder to digest. And because there is the element of dark comedy in there, the doom of us becomes easier to witness. I say 'us' because though it is fictional, a made-up story, all the things the movie deals with are too real for it to be funny at times; it's too close to home. Co-written with David Sirota and directed by Adam McKay, though “Don’t Look Up” doesn't hold the fine texture of a great cinema, it is a good cinema. It gets the job done in jolting the audience into a sense of realness.
Photo: Collected
In the film, at first, it looked like the US president is going to step up and try to destroy the comet in its mid-range. But when discovered there is almost a hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of assets in that comet, things change. Comes the CEO of a tech company who has algorithms that can even predict how one will die, and he wants to harness the power of the comet. And so it begins. The whirlpool of diplomacy, the loud promise of ridding the world of hunger and solving its ever-growing power crisis.
After a TV appearance where both the scientists explain what is going to happen in 6 months time, Dr Randall seeing that their story is dipping low in the people's interest pool asks, "Why aren't people terrified?" Tv appearance where everything has to be kept shiny, light and fun. It's an all too familiar scene, our TVs are filled with programmes like that. Where pop culture and urgencies of the world are blended together and presented in neat packages in a way so that the audiences don't have to spend any time thinking.
Photo: Collected
We are living that world, minus the comet. Where there is no hard line between opinions and facts. Where literally everything is up for debate. Dr Randall says at one point why do we have to be "clever or charming or likeable all the time." We really can't just say things now, and have a conversation and listen. We can't even agree at the bare minimum. What Dr Randall asks is the question of this time, "What have we done to ourselves?" and "How do we fix it?"
So when the horrific and beautiful comet rushes towards the earth, the audience still knows that humanity is the villain in the story, not the comet. And there are other elements in the cinema, every one of which is our lived reality, for example, the banality of celebrity activism and empty "woke" words.
I am not going to discuss the cinematic merit of the film because like I said before it probably won't have a space in the pantheon of great cinemas, but it is still a good one. And when there are actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, there's no point almost arguing the acting performances in the movie. Needless to say, it was a pleasure watching them.
Nearing the end, this film really gets to you and makes one feel the heartbreaking truth of what might await us if we carry on with our hedonistic ways. Plus it's nice to see once in a while an American film where the US government isn't the hero and doesn't end up saving the planet. You know, like our own reality. And I am glad this movie gave me a broader perspective on our state.
A scene from “Aguntuk”| Collected
After watching the film, I was thinking of the necessity of looking up, I was thinking about our civilization, and that reminded me of the Satyajit Ray film “Agantuk.” Where our Agantuk, the stranger, says to the kid to never be a "kupa-munduk." In Bangla that literally translates to "a frog in the well." A frog that never leaves and never looks beyond his immediate atmosphere. In an argument over the meaning of being civilized, our Agantuk says that it is one of his greatest regrets that he is not a savage, that he cannot draw a bison like the cave dwellers of Altamira.
Our civilization began because one of the monkeys looked up and saw those endless blinking things in the sky, and wondered and asked, what are these? As we progressed, we kept defining along the way what it means to be human. At this moment of time, with a pandemic raging the world, we are so jaded that we cannot look beyond our screens. That has become our blinking stars. But I hope we look up, and see, and realize what Dr Mindy says at the end, "We really did have everything, didn't we?"
Be the monkeys who looked up!
PhD candidate Kate Dibiasky discovers a comet, and later by the calculation of Dr Randall Mindy, it is confirmed that the comet is hurtling towards the earth and will hit the planet in about 6 months and 14 days. When that scenario presents itself, it doesn't necessarily dawn that the hardest part will be to convince the government to take immediate action to diverge the comet's course. Or that the task will also inevitably include making people believe that there is a comet.
This is the beginning of the movie “Don’t Look Up.”
If “Don’t Look Up” was a straight-up drama, it would be much harder to digest. And because there is the element of dark comedy in there, the doom of us becomes easier to witness. I say 'us' because though it is fictional, a made-up story, all the things the movie deals with are too real for it to be funny at times; it's too close to home. Co-written with David Sirota and directed by Adam McKay, though “Don’t Look Up” doesn't hold the fine texture of a great cinema, it is a good cinema. It gets the job done in jolting the audience into a sense of realness.
In the film, at first, it looked like the US president is going to step up and try to destroy the comet in its mid-range. But when discovered there is almost a hundred and forty trillion dollars worth of assets in that comet, things change. Comes the CEO of a tech company who has algorithms that can even predict how one will die, and he wants to harness the power of the comet. And so it begins. The whirlpool of diplomacy, the loud promise of ridding the world of hunger and solving its ever-growing power crisis.
After a TV appearance where both the scientists explain what is going to happen in 6 months time, Dr Randall seeing that their story is dipping low in the people's interest pool asks, "Why aren't people terrified?" Tv appearance where everything has to be kept shiny, light and fun. It's an all too familiar scene, our TVs are filled with programmes like that. Where pop culture and urgencies of the world are blended together and presented in neat packages in a way so that the audiences don't have to spend any time thinking.
We are living that world, minus the comet. Where there is no hard line between opinions and facts. Where literally everything is up for debate. Dr Randall says at one point why do we have to be "clever or charming or likeable all the time." We really can't just say things now, and have a conversation and listen. We can't even agree at the bare minimum. What Dr Randall asks is the question of this time, "What have we done to ourselves?" and "How do we fix it?"
So when the horrific and beautiful comet rushes towards the earth, the audience still knows that humanity is the villain in the story, not the comet. And there are other elements in the cinema, every one of which is our lived reality, for example, the banality of celebrity activism and empty "woke" words.
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I am not going to discuss the cinematic merit of the film because like I said before it probably won't have a space in the pantheon of great cinemas, but it is still a good one. And when there are actors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Jonah Hill, there's no point almost arguing the acting performances in the movie. Needless to say, it was a pleasure watching them.
Nearing the end, this film really gets to you and makes one feel the heartbreaking truth of what might await us if we carry on with our hedonistic ways. Plus it's nice to see once in a while an American film where the US government isn't the hero and doesn't end up saving the planet. You know, like our own reality. And I am glad this movie gave me a broader perspective on our state.
After watching the film, I was thinking of the necessity of looking up, I was thinking about our civilization, and that reminded me of the Satyajit Ray film “Agantuk.” Where our Agantuk, the stranger, says to the kid to never be a "kupa-munduk." In Bangla that literally translates to "a frog in the well." A frog that never leaves and never looks beyond his immediate atmosphere. In an argument over the meaning of being civilized, our Agantuk says that it is one of his greatest regrets that he is not a savage, that he cannot draw a bison like the cave dwellers of Altamira.
Our civilization began because one of the monkeys looked up and saw those endless blinking things in the sky, and wondered and asked, what are these? As we progressed, we kept defining along the way what it means to be human. At this moment of time, with a pandemic raging the world, we are so jaded that we cannot look beyond our screens. That has become our blinking stars. But I hope we look up, and see, and realize what Dr Mindy says at the end, "We really did have everything, didn't we?"
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