American exceptionalism is going to kill us all

Why Adam McKay's 2021 political satire "Don't Look Up" deserves a second look

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If you’re not aware of director Lars Von Trier’s 2011 film “Melancholia,” let me summarize it for you. First of all, it’s the second film in a trio Von Trier calls “The Depression Trilogy.” It is not a happy film. Melancholia follows two wealthy sisters in the lead-up to one of their marriages. Because a wedding is on the horizon, tempers are running high. Unfortunately, an asteroid is about to hit the planet—which adds to everyone’s anxiety, until the anxiety transforms into nihilism. If the planet is going to be obliterated, what is the point of a wedding? What is the point of believing in anything? What is the point of love? There is no humor in this film, but there is a lot of beauty, and it is absolutely steeped in panic. I saw the film in a movie theater (remember those?), and viscerally remember how Lars Von Trier’s thrumming soundscape made me want to crawl out of my skin. I cried through most of that movie. “This will happen to us, eventually,” I remember thinking. “We haven’t been good caretakers of the beauty in this world.”

Film still from MELANCHOLIA

Melancholia made me melancholic about the state of things. But last Saturday, I watched Adam McKay’s 2021 political black comedy meets apocalyptic satire “Don’t Look Up,” which made me physically sick.¹ Adam McKay is an Oscar Winning director and writer who penned a lot of comedies with his now ex-production partner Will Ferrell—“Anchorman,” “The Big Short”— but he also gives good drama: he directed the “Succession” pilot and was executive producer on the show.

I had never heard of Don’t Look Up—a star-studded feature that came out during Covid. But my husband had it on his watchlist (he’s a film director and has a very long watch list) and so last Saturday, we tucked into it with some microwave popcorn and red wine while our kiddo was at a sleepover. (In the spirit of transparency, the microwave popcorn was mine. My French husband does not truck with microwaved popcorn.)

It’s ironic that this intelligent and cutting film about the apathy of the American government and media to impending global disasters should come out during 2021 where the American government was pretty damn insensitive to the global disaster of Covid. The overview of this film (which stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl freaking Streep, Cate Blanchett, Mark Rylance as so many other big names it’s like a Wes Anderson competitor) follows two unassuming midwestern academics, one (DiCaprio) who is a tenured professor of astronomy, the other (Lawrence) who is pursuing her PhD. In the film’s opening, she’s drinking iced coffee, getting ready for a long evening of star watching, when what to her wondering eyes should appear but a freaking comet headed directly for planet Earth. It’s six months away, but it’s also like ten miles long and is going to create an extinction level event when—not if—it hits.

Then the movie really starts. The rest of the film shows three intelligent and compassionate people (the academics are joined by the head of a NASA department played by Rob Morgan) trying to convince a wealthy fleet of morons that the world is really and truly going to end. Enter Mark Rylance’s unforgettable performance as Peter Isherwell, a Steve Jobs/Elon Musk mash-up who believes he can not only stop the asteroid, but monetize it through his multinational technology company, BASH. The particulars of the plot aren’t important. What is important is that this isn’t a typical American movie where the “good guys” work hard to convince the bad guys that something terrible is coming, and everyone wakes up and gets on the same page to stop it. That reckoning doesn’t come. Instead, you witness rich people resolute in the belief that their money and power and Instagram followings will protect them from a world-ending event.

As I watched this movie (which also made me cry), I couldn’t help but think about the OceanGate submersible situation, which also involved extremely wealthy people who believed that money could protect them from the laws of physics. In case you were under a rock last week, physics won.

Film still from Don’t Look Up / Netflix

“Don’t Look Up” is not a perfect film. In the third act, you will have to sit through two excruciating developments: a concert in which Ariana Grande (playing Riley Bina) and her boyfriend Kid Cute (playing DJ Chello) sing the entirety of a song named for the movie and Timothée Chalamet² as Jennifer Lawrence’s unnecessary 11th hour love interest. It’s fine. Just get up at that point in the movie and go and make a snack. But despite the gratuitousness of the third act, this is a good film, and an important one.

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When I saw “Melancholia,” I accepted that the end of the world was the fault of humans. With “Don’t Look Up,” I accepted that it is (and will be) the fault of Americans. This movie is so clear-eyed about the particular American doggedness to refuse all acts of intellectual rigor in favor of “keeping things light” that the talk show hosts who initially welcome the two academics to their program usher them off because they’re such a bummer with their facts and their science. The President won't move a pinky finger until it serves her in the polls, and the President’s son (played perfectly by Jonas Hill who used to be on my “intolerables” list along with Chalamet but what can I say: people grow and change) who is more interested in whether his Birkin bag will lose value post collision than the fact that his own life will end.

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The other day, a friend apprised me that the kids are using a new expression on the socials: Menty B. A “Menty B” is short for a “mental breakdown.” To me, this suggests that collapses of the human spirit are so frequent, we’re making fun of them. I guess we’re all okay with the fact we’re going to hell in a hand basket—that’s certainly what this film suggests, even while its protagonists fight to death against that apathy—and get made fun of for it in viral memes.

While “Don’t Look Up” is a truly funny film, it’s also terrifying. I’ve never heard anyone I know talk about it. I never read about it. (Again, it came out during a global pandemic, and I was stuck in Mexico without WiFi, but still.) This film is so damn pertinent to everything we’re living today that I urge you to see it. Personally, I see the comet as a metaphor for the NRA but you can choose your poison. The abhorrent President and tech billionaire characters are real people walking among us, talking on their cell phones and ruining the plant, a planet they are going to use their money to escape when it’s past the point of no return.

I am leaving for vacation today, but if you would like to watch this movie in my absence, please do, and then we can talk about it when I’m home. It’s a particularly good choice for a dark film night in the days leading up to the Fourth of July. Had the film come out just a few years later than it did, instead of Ariana Grande singing “Look Up,” they could have cast Taylor Swift singing “Hi, we’re the problem, it’s us.” Because the problem has been Americans for quite some time, IMHO.

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1. Sick in the good/bad way that happens when art calls something by its name, and your realize that it is a true name, and probably too late for you to do anything about it.

2. Don’t @ me. He gives me hives. I will not enter into a discussion of why I should reconsider my position on Timothée Chalamet.