DiCaprio spotlights climate crisis in Netflix satire Don’t Look Up
LOS ANGELES: Leonardo DiCaprio said he signed up for Netflix's star-studded film about a comet threatening to wipe out life on Earth because it is an urgent analogy for the climate crisis.
Premiering on Dec 24, the dark satire Don't Look Up stars the US actor and Jennifer Lawrence as astronomers whose warnings about imminent catastrophe fall on deaf ears in a partisan and divided United States led by an incompetent president (Meryl Streep).
Fresh from attending the UN COP26 climate change summit in Glasgow, DiCaprio said writer-director Adam McKay's script solved the "next to impossible" problem of making a suspenseful film about a crisis that "evolves over a century".
"How do we as a species, as a society, as a culture, politically, deal with imminent Armageddon?" DiCaprio asked a Los Angeles preview screening audience on Thursday.
"He had cracked the code, so to speak, on how to bring all the insanity that we, as the human race, are responding to this crisis in a two-hour format."
Reviews are under embargo, but initial reaction was effusive, with Variety's Clayton Davis predicting it will make "a seismic impact (pun intended)" on the Oscar race.
DiCaprio hoped the film would "start to create different conversations, and more people talking about it will push the private sector and the powers that be to make massive change".
But he admitted he had "not much" optimism about humanity's ability to resolve the climate crisis.- AFP
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