While I was really fascinated with learning more about climate activist Greta Thunberg, I’ll admit that the idea of sitting down for a whole full length film devoted to her scared me a bit. I follow her tweets, and like most I have listened to part of her speeches, through the media. I have even watched profiles on the Swedish high school student that typically portray her as an enraged teenager who shoots world leaders the stink-eye and pushes forward her unvarying agenda. Not the best way to spend an afternoon, I thought.
But thanks to filmmaker Nathan Grossman and an upcoming Hulu documentary which will premiere in North America on November 13th, I was pleasantly surprised. Within ‘I Am Greta’ I discovered a complex young woman filled with strong ideals and the right vulnerability to drive those principles home — make them seem like we all should get on board of the sustainability train to save our beloved planet. Pardon the pun.
Because ‘I Am Greta’ shows Thunberg at her most intimate, and also uncovers the microcosmos of those around her who have made her actions, travels and principles possible.
The documentary starts off with a montage of naysayers in voiceovers talking about how “global warming is a hoax” and “man can’t change climate” (uttered by the likes of Donald Trump and George W. Bush) played over images of fires, floods and destruction from around the world.
If ‘I Am Greta’ was a dream, this would appear to be our worst nightmare.
Then the camera begins to zero in on Greta Thunberg, a young woman alone on the streets of Stockholm, while she does one of her “School Strikes for Climate” completely alone — that of course later became her trademark #FridaysForFuture and has since garnered thousands of followers. Confronted with both adults who want to teach her they know better, and those who condescendingly pretend to support her, she quietly and firmly stands up to both types. Greta, I learned from this film, is a woman who stands her ground, unapologetically and maturely.
We live in a patriarchal society where strong messages by women need to be delivered in little red riding hood packages with pretty bows — let’s face it. A strong, adult, angry woman talking about the environment and climate change might be easily dismissed, as Al Gore (not a woman but still!) was so simply ignored years ago. Yes, the film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ won an Oscar, yes Gore was tolerated with his message of impending doom, but seriously, what was really done about it? On November 4th of this year, the US officially left the Paris Agreement and our new President Joe Biden has a lot of work ahead of him to rejoin the pact and bring the country on the right environmental path once again.
We live in dire times and our climate is only going to get worse.
So Greta is that pretty package needed to make the point, albeit it one that appears problematic because of her Asperger Syndrome. She must be told when to eat, only has a certain variety of vegan ingredients that she can stomach, she picks out her clothing for important meetings carefully and during her transatlantic voyage on the sailboat that brings her to the United Nations in NYC, for the Climate Change Forum, she cries. Desperately scared and uncomfortable, without a routine so important to Aspergers and seemingly alone, Greta cries. Her father is clearly the driving force behind this young woman, who unlike other kids and adults with Asperger, seems to thrive in the limelight. Yet Mr. Thunberg is a problematic figure to me, always smiling, a bit half baked hippie at times and at a meeting with UN Secretary General António Manuel de Oliveira Guterres, Greta has to shush her father silent.
But the one wonderful thing about him is that he appears to keep her safe, surrounded by the creepy people who clearly gravitate to a young woman who is getting attention.
‘I Am Greta’ director Nathan Grossman
Throughout ‘I Am Greta’ the Swedish-born Grossman follows her journey and adventures like a proverbial fly on the wall. We are never truly conscious that we aren’t along for the ride with Thunberg and that a cinematic fourth wall separates us from the young activist. We feel like we are on the boat with her, speaking in front of the UN and on the Fridays for Future marches.
At one point, Vladimir Putin provides a few words of negative wisdom when the Russian leader points out, while talking about Greta, that she doesn’t realize how “the world is complex.” Adding that people in countries like China and continents such as Africa, wish to live as the rest of us in the West and that’s what causes the most damage to the environment. He is spot on of course, even if we dislike Putin we must admit it, and part of the reason we find ourselves locked down almost anywhere in the world at the moment has a lot to do with different cultures and separated worlds coming together. But that’s a whole other film, for another era.
Of course, one thing we need to question within ourselves is how we can manage to be kind to the environment when we hardly manage to be kind to one another — on any given day. We make noise that disturbs our neighbors, we fight about the most trivial things and don’t allow for age and cultural differences. Even a different opinion on social media becomes a series of name calling and threats.
Ultimately, we need to collectively figure out that we are in this all together, roll up our sleeves and begin to work on a plan, or rather a series of plans to change our world. This film is a great way to take that first step, as Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously wrote “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small — A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.”
The perfect way to begin the long journey to saving the world around us is to stream ‘I Am Greta’ — it is an easy watch, beautifully made but it is not small.
It is one grandiose film featuring one heck of a mighty woman.
On Hulu premiering November 13th, visit their website here.