I left for the cinema in a rush, as usual. Almost the only showtime to see the film in English, but hey baby we’re in the province and what can you do… that’s how it is, it’s all normal and right like this.
We’ll come back to normal and right like this later.
I more or less knew what it was about and I was a bit let down, I told myself: “we’re still at this, here we go again, who cares about being told for the millionth time that the world is on fire because of some bad guy?”
I buy the ticket. The cashier hands me the poster of the film I picked. I go in and, in the solitude of my cinema adventures, I sit down, scroll a bit, then the film starts.
I see this guy with this monstrous cat who then tears off a huge chunk of ice from Greenland. Then he tries to explain the situation to the president of the United States, who makes a joke that doubled me over in my seat.
At some point the mask drops, someone calls from the dressing room of what looks like an actor. The mask goes back on and off to the EU to explain that we’re all complicit, no one excluded.
Then he’s a man again and loses his daughter.
And then you find out the tragedy has already happened and that we’re watching a satirical show about an event that already took place. And that’s where the whole table flips.
The film ends. Damn, so Don’t Look Up was crap after all, so paternalistic, and I thought it was a little film, only to change my mind talking to people smarter than me cinematically speaking: more cultured than me.
No, it was crap. As is One Battle After Another (oops) not because it’s bad but because it’s crap, always and in any case, to explain to people how to live in the world. It adds nothing except making you feel better about yourself.
And yes, I watched it after Naza, cinematically it’s nothing. Genocide aside, I also slept.
But the theater was full, packed, in-the-province-baby.
Making satire of satire is the best and most liberating thing you can do in this historical moment: our buddy Iñárritu did good by making it.
But there’s a problem with the film, and not a small one. It doesn’t move you, it explains, it’s wonderfully intelligent in its ideas, in the direction and in everything, but it doesn’t move you.
And this coldness, which I think was necessary for this kind of operation, doesn’t put it on par with other stuff he’s done. In fact, it’s definitely below Birdman even if the references are obvious: to him, There Will Be Blood, Dr. Strangelove.
But it doesn’t move you, it’s a film of the head and not of the heart.
As a coach used to say, to play you need a cold head and a warm heart. Gonzalo, the heart is a bit chilly, alas.
PS: Naturalism has fuck all to do with it, and neither does Trump (because it’s an anti-leadership film — thankfully — and not about capitalism either — thank God, otherwise what a drag)
PPS: Yes, I’m back to what I thought before, Don’t Look Up is a little film. Amen.
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