If You DON'T LOOK UP It Still Comes Down

Every now and then there comes a movie that is a reflection of the times, you know, how we are living now. The first such movie that I can recall was the movie NETWORK. It's the story of a fictional network that predicted the creation and rise of Fox News almost to a tee. It recounts the unhinging of a popular news anchor who utters the famous, "I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore!" He passed away before the film's release but still won best actor for this film.

The screen play, written by Paddy Chayefsky, was a tongue-in-cheek comment on how he felt broadcast news, especially, was going in 1976. He later commented on watching Fox he never thought TV would head in the direction it did. I wonder, what does he think now especially since Fox News is far more entertainment than news fact.

Another movie that comes to mind, to me, the perfect ending for a dreadful century, was AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999). It tells the tale of a middle class suburban man dealing with a mid-life crisis as the world he knows (as the rest of us discovered) crumbles. Forced out of his job during the "re-structuring" American companies forced on their workers as they moved manufacturing offshore, he reverts back into adolescent behavior that leads to an untimely end. 

Netflix's newest and at the moment most popular film is their very own DON'T LOOK UP, a sweeping commentary on our lives today where reality TV and life have become so blurred you don't know which is which. It features an amazing cast: Meryl Streep, Leonard DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande and many others.  While billed as a comedy it is essentially a disaster movie made funny as it parodies events happening in this country today. 

The comet's path

While looking at the stars a student working on her Ph.D (Lawrence) discovers a huge comet heading our way. She takes her finding to her teacher (DiCaprio) who brings the coordinates to his class and they work out the trajectory. Suddenly he realizes the comet will be a direct hit on earth and the massive size of the comet is a life ending event when it hits earth.

They hurry to tell NASA and others in the government about the impending disaster ... 6 months and 14 days away ... and that's when the comedy begins. 

You may ask, "How can a disaster movie be funny?" Trust me, once you realize that this is a parody of our polarized times it makes perfect sense. Streep, who plays the President, is outrageous, not unlike recent events here. Her chief of staff, her son, Jonah Hill, is as clueless about the real world as a recent president's own sons. He dismisses University of Michigan people and wants to check with Harvard, Yale and such.

To cap it off, despite the military's of the world sending rockets and a retired space shuttle to strike the comet in an attempt to deflect it's course, that too is deflected because a crazy billionaire thinks that it can be mined for the trillions of dollars of rare and valuable metals it holds. I mean if you have a billion, why not two ... right?

I've read the critics comments and wonder, do they really understand the message? Did they with the other two movies mentioned? Are critics and today's "influencers" so wrapped up in themselves (yes) that they can't see the forest for the trees? To me this movie speaks volumes about how shallow our times have become. You will believe a quack of any stripe over the reality of scientific data.

The closing scenes say it all. The president leads rally's nationwide with the slogan "Don't Look Up" as if what you might see is true until finally someone does look up and as they do, the reality of what is going to happen becomes real.

When it becomes apparent that they are, in fact, doomed the billionaire hustles off to his interstellar spaceship, President in tow, where after 22,000 + years in space they find and land on an inhabitable planet. 

While our president does get her just reward, so do the citizens of earth. There is no happy ending, there is just ... an ending. All we can hope and pray is that we, in our stupidity, don't do something that will end this very same way.

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