Don’t Look Up: four climate experts on the polarising disaster film
Critics haven’t been kind to Adam McKay’s eco-satire, but many climate experts are lauding it. Here four give their views
Rarely has a film been as divisive as Adam McKay’s climate satire Don’t Look Up. Although it has been watched by millions, and is already Netflix’s third most watched film ever, the response from critics was largely negative. Many found its story of scientists who discover an asteroid heading for Earth a clumsy allegory for the climate crisis, while others just found it boring. But many in the climate movement have praised the film, and audience reviews have been generally positive.
We asked four climate experts to give their views on the film. Warning: spoilers ahead.
Ketan Joshi: ‘The main character of the climate crisis is absent’
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Fiona Harvey: ‘The role of the technoloon, played by Mark Rylance, struck a chord’
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After 17 years of reporting on the climate crisis, I doubted at first that the film had much to tell me about the frustrations of communicating a hypothetical catastrophe. As the film’s scientists first struggled to clothe their data in sober, measured terms, then broke into swearing, armwaving shrieks about provable imminent apocalypse, I nodded along. Yes, that’s what it feels like, and no, no one listens, not until it is too late.
Yet it was illuminating in unexpected ways – something I’ve always struggled with is how rational people can fail to grasp the scale of climate breakdown, how we could leave it so late. As the film shows, it’s partly because vested interests keep it that way, but it’s also just because we’re human. Believing in disaster before it strikes is fundamentally not how we work.
The role of the techno-loon, played by Mark Rylance, struck another chord. Cop26 was not a failure, though on the surface that was the obvious conclusion – it was more nuanced than that. Soon after the Cop26 circus left Glasgow, the danger of painting the outcome in such blackand-white terms became apparent, as wellmeaning experts concluded – in all seriousness – as talking didn’t work, our best hope would be for billionaires to bypass the UN and geoengineer the climate from space. Because obviously the answer to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the atmosphere is to conduct a vast uncontrolled experiment on the atmosphere.
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Nina Lakhani: ‘Jennifer Lawrence’s character will resonate with many female climate scientists’
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How Kate Dibiasky, the postgraduate student played by Jennifer Lawrence who discovered the comet, is portrayed as an unhinged hysterical woman, will resonate with many female climate scientists and activists whose crucial knowledge has been sidelined. The scene where her parents declare that they’re in favour of the jobs the comet will provide will resonate with millions of people, including me, trying to deal with relatives who have bought into political lies.
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Damian Carrington: ‘It highlights the absurdity of staring disaster in the face, then looking away’
I loved Don’t Look Up, both as an entertainment and as a climate crisis parable. But the movie has been panned by many critics, with the main charge being that it is heavy-handed, blunt and too obvious. But that is exactly the point.
Scientists have been issuing blunt warnings about obvious dangers of global heating for years and have been ignored – carbon emissions are still rising. The film perfectly skewers the key ways in which they have been ignored: for short-term political expediency and short-term corporate profit.
In particular, the movie beautifully portrays the incredulity of scientists that their carefully constructed evidence can be dismissed with bluster such as “we’ll sit tight and assess” by leaders more concerned about today’s political weather and a media more interested in the minutiae of celebrities’ lives.
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The point of the film is savagely highlighting the absurdity of staring disaster in the face, then looking away rather than acting. In that respect, it is a triumph.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/08/dont-look-upfour-climate-experts-on-the-polarising-disaster-film. Access: 08/01/2022.