2021 DISPATCH 1
DON’T LOOK UP Adam McKay, 2021
One of the most amusing things I read in one of the rare positive reviews for Adam McKay's polarising Don't Look Up is the admission that the film is flawed – the underlying absurdity being, of course, that Multiplex movies are flawed by their very nature. McKay is, after all, an American director making mainstream American movies for American audiences, so "flawed" is the very least one can expect. And, of course, the flaws are sure to be as many and varied as there are viewers, and will most likely say more about them than the film itself.
One of the criticisms of Don't Look Up is that it won't motivate anyone (leaders or individuals) to alter their position on climate change, but climate change isn't the main focus of the film. A comet hurtling towards Earth is a metaphor to illustrate that whether it's climate change, a pandemic, or abuse of power (individual, corporate, political), the elephant in the room is self-serving denial and indifference, particularly when it comes to the relentless pursuit of money, power and control.
The humour may or may not be to one's taste, and whatever one thinks about the film craft (acting, direction, writing, etc.) is equally subjective. More important is the film's concerns about the mechanisms that shape the fascism of our times, from the woke impulse behind cancel culture to the machinations of global communications networks, Big Tech conglomerates, money marketeers, political cronyism and so on.
One could argue that the film might have been more broadly accepted as a drama or documentary (!), but would it then have attracted the second-highest viewership on its opening weekend in Netflix history? Would people be talking about it as much as they are? Will it galvanise the distracted acquiescent masses to rise up and demand change, or tweak the conscience of the powerful sufficiently to motivate a reappraisal of their objectives and construct more egalitarian structures, at least to ensure the survival of humankind?
Watching the film, I was reminded of this meme: "To understand and address the problems of the world, we need to look at who profits by them rather than who suffers from them".
Interestingly, some adverse reactions have taken umbrage with the film's depiction of humankind as too stupid and self-obsessed to curtail its imminent extinction. But criticising a film for stating the obvious is akin to being too stupid and self-obsessed to simply accept the obviousness of the assertion, which, incidentally, is not as misanthropic as it may appear. Los Angeles Times film reviewer, Justin Chang, wrote that nothing in the film can compete with what he incisively calls our "real-world Idiocracy".
While Don't Look Up doesn't have the scalpel-sharp outrage of Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Jude, 2021), the iconic sophistication of Dr Strangelove (Kubrick, 1964), the scathing sarcasm of In the Loop (Iannucci, 2009), or could be regarded as a film to ruminate over to discover hidden depths, it nevertheless says what it has to say with sincerity. It uses caricature effectively (if at times heavy-handedly) to make its point, take the piss, then send everyone out of the theatre liking or hating it all the way to oblivion.
In stark contrast to the less-than-subtle grandstanding of Don't Look Up, Azor, a brilliant feature debut by Swiss writer/director Andreas Fontana, is cinema for grown-ups, a deeply impressive example of subtle cinematic storytelling of the highest order. Right out of the gate, Fontana has delivered a film that surely ranks as one of the best of 2021 if not the last decade, a restrained mystery with an exquisitely sustained sense of menace that would be the envy of masters of paranoid suspense – Lang, Hitchcock, Kubrick, Pakula, Lynch and many others, of course.
AZOR Andreas Fontana, 2021
Written in collaboration with Mariano Llinás, director of Historias extraordinarias (2008) and La Flor (2018), the film is set in 1980 during Argentina’s “dirty war” and follows a Swiss private banker and his wife (note-perfect performances from Fabrizio Rongione and Stéphanie Cléau as Yvan and Inés de Weil) as they attempt to shore up connections with wealthy South American clients in the wake of the disappearance of Yvan’s business partner, René Keys, an elusive Harry Lime-like character who appears to have had as many powerful enemies as admirers, and whose whereabouts remain ominously opaque. One may not realise until much later in the film, or possibly not until one sees it for a second time, that the handsome man in the opening pre-title shots (see above) is as close as we ever come to the mysterious Mr Keys.
Divided into five precise chapters, the film’s distinctly novelistic tone eschews generic thrills in preference to following the de Weils as they journey through an elegant world of morally bankrupt wealth and corrupt privilege, where the illusion of propriety masks barely perceptible cold-blooded expediency. As an interesting aside, the word “azor” refers to a patient bird that quietly observes its prey before attacking, but it’s described in the film as a term to denote being cautious about what you say.
As a depiction of the true face of evil, Azor is in a class of its own. Fontana’s fiction, with its subtle echoes of Greene, Le Carré, Conrad, Alonso and Martel, is pointedly framed by a line of questionable if not despicable cunts that stretch from the present day through the Argentine junta of the 70-80s to numerous military and presidential figures (cited in a coolly disquieting scene) all the way back to the fall of Lucifer himself, who, in a sense, enjoys an unexpected but pivotal cameo.
Some might find the film too slow or cryptic, while others might take issue with the subject matter, reluctant to sit through another movie about the callous evil that men do. What don’t we know, after all? Even if the details of specific events are unknown to us, the fact that human societies have always been fashioned to enable the machinations of the most corrupt and self-serving (the vile or “de-vil-ish” among us), might make Azor appear to some as a glorification of evil made in the guise of a work denouncing it.
It’s similar to the argument levelled against Don’t Look Up, which has been criticised for making mere entertainment out of the most serious challenges facing the world today. These are perfectly valid criticisms, and I wouldn’t attempt or even want to defend Azor or Don’t Look Up from them because everyone is free to their opinions, to like or dislike films, books, and any other form of art or culture as one pleases, or, more to the point, as one’s personal filters and perceptions dictate. Which is as it should be, except that no matter how many films and books shine lights into the dark recesses of our souls, we remain – as Andreas Fontana reveals in his exquisite film and Adam McKay shouts in our faces – nonplussed.
It would be comforting and very easy to say that what the world lacks is sufficient political will or focus to seriously address our problems, but the one thing that the abrasive cartoon of Don’t Look Up and the sophisticated existential contemplation of Azor have in common is that both clearly articulate the reason why we are poised to leap into the proverbial handcart. As the old meme says, the opposite of love isn’t evil, it’s indifference.