Netflix’s latest comedy (released 24 Dec 2021) is a laugh-but-cringe satire on the inability of our modern institutions and social systems to respond to existential threats. As the US President (Meryl Streep) says early on “You cannot go around saying to people that there’s 100% chance that they’re going to die.” Specifically the film dissects the pathologies of a Media industry adapted for entertainment over truth; a Political system tuned for persuasion over truth; and a Business/Tech sector oriented towards making money, over truth.
Among many comic scenes to choose from, there is a mordant moment where the Silicon Valley boss (Mark Rylance) is accused by the scientist of being ‘just’ a businessman and reacts with cold fury at the challenge to his self-image as much as his publicly projected image that he is not, in fact, a messiah.
Perhaps most depressingly, the film explores how we as individuals are not inclined towards accepting difficult truths either – especially when clever and persuasive people in business, the media and politics provide alternative narratives for our reassurance and comfort.
Against this funny but gloomy backdrop of contemporary society, Scientists (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan) are the prophets – speaking truth to an unbelieving, distracted world that understandably prefers good news over impending disaster. Climate change anyone?
It is the scene at the end, just before the comet hits Earth, where the humanity of the film resides. A last supper where a family and friends eat and drink to celebrate and attempt to be glad for their love and their lives. Even if the supper is melancholy with the their understanding of impending Apocalypse.
Within the satirical carnage, the role of Faith emerges largely unscathed in comparison to the Political, Commercial, and Media powers of the world. Delightfully, it is the shoplifting skater dude (Timothée Chalamet) within a group of scientific skeptics who expresses their prayerful, elegiac acceptance at the end of the film, even if that prayer is offered by the film as beautiful and comforting poetry rather than practical action. Like science – faith is presented as speaking truth, and looking to the heavens, yet both are also critiqued as tragically disconnected from the everyday practical power required to save the world.
So back to Climate Change. The film is thankfully a satire: neither a true reflection of the powers of this world, nor a precise metaphor for Climate Change. Nevertheless, it is nevertheless a timely provocation for me – perhaps for us all – on how we might personally respond to the prospect of a warming planet with action before elegy.
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆
