If you care about Climate Change and its consequences, do look up Leonardo’s new offering, Don’t Look Up.
The film unfolds as a funny and horrifying allegory of how world leaders, corporations, and big media are dealing with global warming and its consequences.
McKay and co-writer David Sirota, who is the editor-at-large at American socialist magazine Jacobin, accomplish this by giving the movie’s characters the challenge of surviving a destructive comet that will hit the Earth In six months. By expediting the process of imminent destruction that Climate Change is expected to bring, McKay and Sirota attempt to narrow down, predict, and comment on global reactions to cataclysmic events.
Movies can motivate
Don’t’ Look Up is just one of the movies bringing the limelight on Climate Change and how it will affect us. Last year saw the release of Bigger Than Us, a documentary that featured Melati Wijsen, climate activist. The docu follows Wijsen around the world as she meets with other young people who are working to bring about a positive change in the world. It covers activists championing freedom of speech in Brazil; help for refugees in Greece; education for refugees in Lebanon; women’s rights in Malawi; food security in Uganda, and those tackling the climate crisis in the US.
Movies and documentaries can play a powerful role in helping raise awareness of the need to tackle global problems, including the climate crisis.
Al Gore’s 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth won two Oscars and saw the former US Vice-President awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to “build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change”.
Climate communication specialist John Cook assessed the documentary’s impact for The Conversation in 2006, concluding that it raised awareness, changed behaviour and inspired others to communicate the issue of climate change.
In 2004, The Day After Tomorrow picked up the idea that a change in ocean currents could usher in a new ice age.
The comet cometh
Don’t Look Up follows two astronomers, Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and Dr Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), who embark on a media tour to inform the world about the comet. The tour turns increasingly bizarre and spins out of control as the world obviously misses their message.
First, they meet President Orlean (Meryl Streep), whose Donald Trump-like behaviour probably appears less crude because of her gender. Her Chief of Staff is her hyper-materialistic son Jason (Jonah Hill). “Keep it simple, no math”, scientist Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) advises the astronomers about briefing the pea-brained Orleans. They initially brush off Mindy and Dibiasky’s concerns but come around when President Orlean gets involved in a sex scandal, for which she plans to fix her image by turning the comet-destroying mission into her Go-America moment.
The Orleans’ plans to destroy the ”comet’ are soon compromised by their mega-donor, tech mogul Isherwell (Mark Rylance), who tells the White House that there are $140 trillion worth of useful minerals in the comet, so it should be allowed to hit earth.
Dibiasky is made to go “off the grid” by the authorities because she rants on television about the craziness and selfishness of everyone around her. However, Mindy becomes an overnight media sensation because of his handsome looks and genial personality.
As the comet gets closer, the populace is polarised into two camps: “just look up”, backed by Mindy and Dibiasky, and “don’t look up”, backed by the Orleans and Isherwell. When Mindy challenges Isherwell about the scientific validity of his plan, Isherwell rebukes Mindy for considering him a “businessman” instead of a visionary, and calls Mindy a “lifestyle idealist”, a conclusion based on Isherwell’s data analysis about Mindy’s online behaviour. (Isherwell also predicts that President Orlean will die from something called a “Brontorec”, which has a superb punchline that appears at the end of the movie).
