Matters that have a realer impact is rarely focused upon, deeming doom is distant yet as if a comet looming. So Adam McKay co-writes a story with David Sirota and directs "Don't Look Up" — simmering with funny urgency, its energy is horror underneath the defensive laughs. The tragicomedy begins at Michigan State University: having discovered a supposed 9 to 10 kilometer-wide meteor blasting through the galaxy, PhD-candidate astronomer Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) consults her professor Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), and after thorough calculations, conclude the celestial fireball is dwindling towards Earth. Dibiasky is certain the world-destroying comet will crash onto the planet in six months. The sequence is told by McKay in frantic editing, shots of DiCaprio advising NASA of the inevitable impact through phone call, his face crumpling in agony and worry over the end of existence in half a year. Editor Hank Corwin splices the neurotic vibe as Mindy's anxiety is superimposed with Diabisky's confusion, Lawrence is a semi-goth scientist with concern for mankind yet abberant about her depressing discovery. Through the delirious pace of anxiety-urgency and perplexing human response, McKay displays the absurdity, so perhaps laugh at the fate that will demolish the world anyway. Corwin's editing is as swift as the comet, but to see everything unfold before the sequence ends is as if life has already faded, and the guffaws are just an echo in the wind post-impact. Quick picture medley cannot alleviate the dragging pace. At less than 140 minutes, “Don’t Look Up” feels it lasts more than the six months until collision.
NASA scholar Dr. Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) decides to assist the astronomer duo. The trio go to the White House to meet with US President Janie Orlean (Merryl Streep) and Chief of Staff-Son Jason (Jonah Hill). In a vicious graze of vexing comedy, Orlean neglects the severity of the disgracefully named Comet Diabisky. The lady President is more concerned about her public brand as a smoker, believing her honesty with her vices enamores her with the masses. This may be Streep's most despicable role, the antithesis of her Margaret Thatcher in "The Iron Lady” (2011). Streep as Orlean is hard-shelled, with no real empathy to anything but the power searing in her delusive smile, genuine in her pretension underneath the cigarette smoke of apathy. Diabisky is immediately upset about the government's stonewalling, the younger astronomer sheds her Wu-Tang Clan-mouthing student mode into the voice of morality in "Don't Look Up." Thus her erratic depth is unchained, Lawrence retches the character's instability through the riotous screenplay by McKay. Meanwhile, Mindy sits nervous between Diabisky and Morgan. DiCaprio's convulsions are firecracking, meteoric, and he contains it by reciting the calculations listed in his notebook. He refuses to crumble, though his spirit is broiled amid worry that cannot be flushed by Xanax or a trip to the toilet. The actor monologues in the bathroom mirror, only he can hear himself and his warning of inevitability, foreshadowing the non-action from citizens and governments. With Orlean, McKay commentates on the feminist surge for a femme Head of State. Being a lady does not automatically mean they are competent, Orlean is self-serving but funnily so, her flaw exposes the public's appeal towards a woman leader whilst failing to penetrate her agenda amid her purported honesty to her status. Such status counteracts what a leader should be: admirable, rather than desirable; empathic with trueness that bears good behavior, and where they are flawed, they are not proud, instead willing to better their disposition as much as progressing the good of the state. Streep expertly negates all, and she's irresistibly diabolical as Jason is fallaciously chafing. The Chief-of-Staff just follows orders (as does the government) from his seemingly heartless mother, Hill’s comedic deadness is steaming with irk too clownish to look away from. Could this be Jonah Hill being Jonah Hill? Or Jonah Hill fictionalized to make the real Hill a kinder totem? Either, he’s grazing the nerves with ticklish negligence, it’s devilish buffoonery. Leadership is not utterly following, it’s the duty to act when the circumstances necessitate.
Appearing on pop talk show "The Daily Rip," Diabisky and Mindy are envibed with instant hopelessness. The TV show is more into hype than fact and reponsible news, "Don't Look Up" reiterates the need for dignified, truer journalism opposite daunting idolatry that media has satirically become. Disturbingly funny, hosts Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry) devote TV time to guest pop star Riley Bina (a fictionalized brat iteration of Arianna Grande), discussing her break-up with rapper DJ Chello (lovesick Kid Cudi, officially credited as Scott Mescudi). On air, they reconcile, with DJ Chello ending the segment by proposing to Bina via satellite, and the hosts and TV crew adore the tumultuous instant. When sat on the news desk, tired scientists Diabisky and Mindy are again shut off, the hosts forsake their fact-based caution about the dwindling comet. Through "The Daily Rip," the media is a shard of light, a reflection without any gaze in it, and it will shatter with the weight of its air — white noise from audiences bored of factual content though amused by pop culture. A kettle boiled, Diabisky melts down on the show, Lawrence reconfigures her facial structures to hurtle a prophetic scream: "We're all gonna die!" A seamless summation of McKay's brutal humor — the terror is encapsuled in the absurd oration, it's true but actuality is often seen as a gag, fictitious, archaic to the fateful tale of Adam and Eve banished from Eden. Did it happen? Faith deems so. Would the comet strike damnation to an ignorant world? Social media is gospel. Bremmer asks Mindy, "...is there life out there?" McKay's script annoys, but inquires; it is delectably, sinfully equivocal. The answer: life is here, and Comet Diabisky is coming to rapture ignorance, hence Diabisky rains fire on "The Daily Rip" and is immortalized, for the entirety of six dead-end months, into a galaxy of unfunny memes. "We're all gonna die!" has morphed into an epigram and elegy, forever etched in the internet as the celestial body’s approach define mankind's fate — demonstrating the screenplay's ability to ponder and parody. Diabisky unendingly vexed, it gnaws at her since the initial encounter with Chief of Staff Jason. With Hill's unbearable ripeness transfigured into the Presidential son's incompetence, this manchild is as wacky as he is naive to his commands, a government whose self-belief is illusionary. Faithful are those who refuse to consider other perspectives, shots with tremendous speed edited into in "Don't Look Up." McKay's surrealism adds to the comedy that hurries the tragedy.
The cosmic missile about to wreck the world is near, quick have a laugh before the fire dissolves humanity's humor. Surrealist technique sometimes detail characterization: a split-second capture of Diabisky'a boots during White House discussion is superimposed to puntuate her polar view from everyone else in the room. She's straightforward, street-smart with a cosmic brain, and declares "I don't give a shit anymore." "Don't Look Up" does not pride on being a savior of the masses, it wants the masses to save their asses with the message it carries with meteoric nerve: media is for the cute, put science on mute. Dr. Mindy so fulminates on his second appearance in "The Daily Rip,” DiCaprio's signature volcanic roar is seen and hear he spits his disgust over the lack of concern of mass and media. He's about to cry, yet tearful glaciers are parched upon his rage. On television, Mindy pacifies himself by venting out, but anger blasts anyway, freezing hosts Brie and Jack. Though their fun remains — Mindy is banished from the show and 'off the grid,' alike Diabisky, with a bag over his head at the backseat of a cop mobile. Perhaps under orders from President Orlean, or if asked a devotee, then Mindy and Diabisky probably went into willful exile for misinformation non-dissemination for the common good.
“Don't Look Up" is an over 2-hour long meme written with sarcasm that, perplexingly, educates. If the punchlines don't elicit giggles, it is because the gag is ignorance. McKay’s political collage is wiser than its script, but no one knows it because they don’t look up…from their screens, work, watering their treasured pot-plants or what else could be more important than a planet-destroying astronomical projectile. Trends and hashtags are a fair guess. “Don’t Look Up” is alchemized — with fires in witnesses’ irises of the comet tail and subsequent chemical reaction into action — to #JustLookUp, a campaign birthed from social media to spread awareness about the impending disaster. Yes, it’s real; realer than filters and tweets. Note: an informed citizen is unrelated to an active citizen. To certify the seriousness implanted upon the matter, a charity concert is top-billed by Bina and DJ Chello duet to “Just Look Up,” a satire rap-pop melody that could have been song of the year if the credits roll with the music playing. “Second Nature” by Bon Iver may supercede the witty lyrics and beat-per-harmony pull of “Just Look Up,” the former is symphonic to the debris of the film, rearranging its parts to a more tranquilizing glide. Said debris are from the comet attempted to be destroyed by…bombing it. The suggestion is from billionaire-inventor CEO of BASH Peter Isherwell (Mark Rylance), a variation of Elon Musk if his tech fried all his brain cells. Isherwell launches his BASH space vessels to plant onto the cascading comet, the ships will detonate to obliterate it. As probably expected except by Isherwell, the mission fails and the comet looks to speed up from the blasts towards Earth. Rylance is committed to the Isherwell character, with Chipmunk voice and displaced eagerness, he’s stoic and wide-eyed on his inventions despite the futility of its functions.
The joke is that "Don't Look Up" is too serious to announce the wackiness it contains — sound design, Nicholas Britell, communicates the frenetic hysteria. His score sizzles with rapid awareness of wonderment that it's somehow an impossible feat to absorb the gravity of world's end, still the music conserves the tense inevitability with progressive zeal that means either humankind have gone crazy or the sanest are those who catch on to the swift blow of the depressing outcome. Britwell's sound is unrelenting, the tones tickle and slit, that knit of comedy and tragedy harnessed in "Don't Look Up." Both are truth in the digital age. To select is a matter of perception. Seeing a sky plummet, from the upside is heaven rising — the curse of humane: any right is an opposite of believing. It's up to bearing witness, and what comes upon the view, hopefully, kindles a promising beginning.
Director: Adam McKay
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