While the world was gearing up for Christmas cheer and festivities this weekend, Netflix released Don't Look Up. A movie about impending doom in the form of a comet hurtling towards earth. Kate Dibiasky a Ph.D. candidate in astronomy at Michigan State University, makes a shocking discovery one night. A comet that seems to be traveling through the solar system and coming right towards us. She calls in her mentor, Professor Randall Mindy who calculates the trajectory and concludes that we have six months to live. The comet that is fast approaching our atmosphere has the power to cause the extinction of all the living species on the planet. Spurred into action, Mindy and Kate do the next sensible thing. Inform the authorities. After a long day of being put on hold, taking uncomfortable flights, and sleepless nights, Kate and Mindy finally sit in front of the President to deliver the grave news. And their response? What else is new? With the less than lukewarm response to the imminent end of the world, Kate and Mindy decide to go public with the information. But no matter how hard they cry, they become the scientists who cried wolf. The media and the people who are obsessed over celebrity gossips and more sensational news, brush it off as a hoax. And it doesn't help, that Kate has a very public meltdown seeing the casualness with which people treat the news. What follows is a satirical take on how politicians, ruling government, media channels, capitalists use this as an opportunity to make themselves richer and more powerful. When it becomes obvious that the President will soon be embroiled in a sex scandal, she finally pays attention to what Mindy and Kate had been saying to divert everyone's attention. When they are going to launch missiles to divert the meteor's path, avarice takes the lead again when powerful tech mogul is made to believe that the incoming comet is an abundant source of natural resources that are used to make technological devices. Again conveniently ignoring the global extinction point. Written and directed by Adam Mckay Don't Look Up has a stellar cast. Meryl Streep as a very familiar President, Jonah Hill as a sycophantic Chief of Staff and her son, Leonardo Dicaprio as the perpetually anxious scientist who is catapulted into fame because of his good looks, Jennifer Lawrence is a far cry from her usual bold characters, all bring their A-game on screen. Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as news anchors delivering hard-hitting journalism about celebrity gossips are uncomfortably familiar. The movie echoes reality. Eerily so. Everyone taking advantage of the situation, but no one coming up with a solution. Having spent the better part of the last two years in lockdown, glued to tv screens delivering sensationalized news, politicians evading the real question, brushing off their responsibility so effortlessly, Don't Look Up ends up being a reality rather than satire. By SB
