Don't Look Up - Cynical Acceptance
Thoughts On: Don't Look Up (2021)
With the end of the world imminent, politics and social media clamour for position.
Gently but deathly cynical and distinctly American, Don't Look Up is quite a fun expression of the existential state of Hollywood and US-centric media. I couldn't relate much to its social commentary, as plain and overt as it is, but find the production of this film, in juxtaposition to the save the world sci-fi films of the turn-of-the-century - the key one being Armageddon of course - quite fascinating. It's very hard to imagine a film of this scale and tone being produced in any other era of cinema but the present. There are no heroes, there is no higher humanity, no hope, only cynicism: an unshaken belief in the self-centred nature of humanity. Granted by this cynicism is but one philosophical capacity: acceptance. I find profundity in this, though I do find cynicism highly distasteful and rather unacceptable. But, I suppose Don't Look Up challenges us to question if acceptance is possible without becoming a cynic. With the ending of the narrative we are given an answer, yet it is simultaneously displayed that people do not have much capacity at all for it. Acceptance and peace is possible with delusion or belief. This manifests in Don't Look Up with the themes of religion and family, which come to compose the final images of acceptance, but they manifest too late and amid disaster. Such seals the cynicism of the narrative provided, but perhaps it begs a question of transformation with its crushing social commentary. Hollywood disaster narratives have always had us believe in humanity's capacity to believe enough as to make it through calamity and catastrophe; here the mirror is flipped causing us to question just this, and if great societal change is necessary. Such leaves you with the excess of the narrative's social commentary on modern America laid plain by the script, and me quite surprised that this era of cinema has produced a disaster blockbuster of such negative ambiguity.
I can't say I liked it, and I can't say I think the end of the world would look like this, though I enjoyed the performances of all the key players thoroughly, and, given time, Don't Look Up might likely be looked back upon as a film distinct in this age of social media.
