Legendary experimental documentary filmmaker Godfrey Reggio’s newest project helped me understand what frustrated me so much about the 2021 film Don’t Look Up. That’s director Adam McKay’s cri de coeur polemic about our rapid destruction of the planet and our steadfast complacency to do anything about it, including even recognizing that there’s a problem. In my review for Don’t Look Up, I primarily focused on McKay’s ineffective smugness as a tool for chastising the general public for refusing to take the threat of climate change seriously. (In the film, a meteor’s impending collision with earth is used as a metaphor for climate change.)
While watching Reggio’s latest picture, Once Within a Time – the documentarian shares a co-directing credit with Jon Kane, who served as editor on Reggio’s Naqoyqatsi and Visitors – similar feelings surfaced to the ones I had while watching Don’t Look Up. Once Within a Time doesn’t have a smugness problem. Reggio’s film is playful, at times impenetrable, and evinces a bemused perplexity at the current human condition more than any need to arrogantly lecture. My frustration with the film – and, what I belatedly realized was my frustration with Don’t Look Up – is the missed opportunity of targeting the actual culprits that have caused our current situation.
