Father Pascal Ide, doctor, theologian and… film critic saw "Don't Look Up: Cosmic Denial", the phenomenon film by Adam McKay broadcast on Netflix. This scathing parody of American society lacks finesse, in his view, especially in its allusion to the climate crisis, but contains a very relevant parable: the world's relationship with Heaven.

Don't Look Up: Cosmic Denial is an American science fiction drama film written and directed by Adam McKay, which airs on Netflix. This film with a sparkling cast (Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett, Timothée Chalamet), an astounding success (360 million hours of streaming in 28 operating days) and gripping topicality, lacks finesse, but its interest lies in a thinly veiled parabola. While a comet is going to ravage the Earth, the watchword is: Don't look up! "Don't look up. »

Catastrophe and derision

What is the story? Working with data from the Subaru Telescope, University of Michigan doctoral student Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) discovers a comet from the Oort cloud passing through Jupiter's orbit and whose trajectory directs it directly towards Earth. She warns Professor Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and together with his students they calculate that this comet, dubbed Dibiasky, is 5 to 10 kilometers in size, that it will fall in the Pacific off the coast of Chile within six months. and that it will kill all the inhabitants of the Earth. After warning Dr. Clayton "Teddy" Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan), who is the director of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, as well as NASA, they must reach Washington to present the facts to United States President Janie Orlean. (Meryl Streep) and her chief of staff, who is none other than her son, Jason (Jonah Hill). After waiting a whole day, they are finally welcomed the next day. But, after their explanation and the proposal of a plan to deviate the trajectory of the comet with nuclear charges, Janie, only concerned about her political future, answers them: Sit tight and assess (“We are patient and we advise”).

Mindy and Dibiasky then decide to contact a major New York daily to reveal the impending disaster to the general public. They are guests on the television show The Daily Rip, whose presenters are Brie Evantee (Cate Blanchett) and Jack Bremmer (Tyler Perry), who also host Riley Bina (Ariana Grande), whose breakup with her boyfriend Dj Chello (Kid Cudi) ignites social networks. Last guests, the two scientists expose the facts. In response, the presenters laugh at them and Evantee quietly seduces Mindy. Furious Kate screams in front of the camera that everyone is going to die. Unfortunately, his exit is derided on social networks. Will anyone take the coming apocalypse seriously?

The symbol of Heaven

The film lacks finesse first in its apologue — the comet which will completely devastate the Earth is the allegory of the current climate crisis —, but also in its relevance (the two events are comparable neither in their cause, involuntary on the one hand and responsible on the other, nor in their effect, absolutely necessary on the one hand and partially contingent on the other) and its caricature (the bad guys Korean-style overplaying, from mimicry to motivation: is it, for example, likely that, however narcissistic she may be, a mother forgets a son who is her chief of staff?).

It remains that the analogy could be broadened and applied to other disasters not so far away, and then concern us more closely (by chance: the attitude of politicians and mainstream media in the health crisis). But the most interesting, even the most piquant, which is probably not intentional, resides, it seems to me, in another parable. The world's population is dying of submitting to a prohibition that is of such importance that it is the title of the film: "Do not look up". However, the sky has always been the symbol of Heaven, even in the two most central acts of the Christian faith: the Lord's prayer ("Our Father who art in heaven") and the profession of faith ("He came down from Heaven "). And we see at the very end of the film the main protagonists reunited breaking this rule (Don't Look Up), praying together, hand in hand, just before the deep impact shaves and abrades all human life on Earth . And this gesture is all the richer in meaning and hope that, just before their gathering, Randall Mindy finally tore himself away from any compromise with the narcissistic President and reconciled himself with the truth. As for Kate Dibiasky, she has finally let go of her egotistical individualism and is finally in love with her chilled lover.

Never, perhaps as today, has the Holy Spirit multiplied the signs of the Father's presence and offered the means to become acquainted with it... provided that, as at the baptism of Jesus, we let us agree to divert our gaze from this one world, and even more from its umbilication, to return it to the heights “from where my help will come” (Ps 121,1).