I AM GRETA
****
Director: Nathan Grossman
Screenwriters: Based on an idea and concept by Olof Berglind, story edited by Peter Modestij.
Principal cast:
Greta Thunberg
Svante Thunberg
Malena Ernman
António Guterres
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Country: Sweden
Classification: CTC
Runtime: 97 mins.
Australian release date: 16 October 2020.
“No-one is doing anything, so I must do what I can.” - Greta Thunberg
Starting in August 2019, on board the racing yacht transporting Greta Thunberg to the 2019 Climate Change Conference at the UN in New York, I Am Greta opens with the young activist musing that sometimes the events of the previous few months seem as if they occurred in a dream. The filmmaker, Nathan Grossman, then takes us back to a year earlier, to August 2018, when Thunberg’s ‘School Strike for the Climate’ began outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. He had unfettered access to the teenager for around twelve months, which gave him (and us) an unfiltered, fly-on-the-wall look at the life and work of this brave girl. And she really is still a girl, a sweet kid with all the usual doubts and concerns of a 15 and 16-year-old, despite her intense conviction about the dangers to the world of climate change. This laser-like focus, of course, stems from her well-documented Asperger’s Syndrome. What she is not, despite Fox News’ description of her in a clip used in I Am Greta, is a “mentally ill child.” Her own assessment of herself is more apt - she proudly declares that, “I am a nerd.”
Grossman began to film Thunberg from the very first day of her strike, when she was alone with her hand-written sign. Watching her discreetly, he was immediately impressed by her grasp of the issues as she spoke to passers-by, one of whom, an elderly woman, berates her for not being in school. Gradually, the lone activist was joined by others her own age until, Friday by Friday, the crowd around her grew and television crews began to cover the weekly event, spreading knowledge and awareness about this small girl and her global cause. Before long, she was being asked to travel to Katowice, Poland, to address world leaders at COP24. Thus began a period of intense train travel (Thunberg refuses to fly because of the emissions it produces) across northern Europe, always accompanied by her doting father, Svante, and it’s in these scenes that we learn much about her daily life. Her autism can cause her to withdraw into herself if things get too overwhelming; she goes quiet and refuses to eat. At one stage we see her dad desperately trying to get her to eat a banana when she is starting to become anxious - he recognises the signs of her discomfort and tries to stop them before they get too great. We also see how determined she can be, despite her vulnerabilities, and that she writes all her own speeches, refusing Svante’s assistance. As he explains, “she knows 97% more about climate change than most politicians.”
I Am Greta is not totally one-sided, however, and we hear plenty of quotes from Thunberg’s detractors. Australia features quite prominently at one stage, with clips from Sky News featuring those prominent climate change deniers Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones. Even the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, crops up, condemning the hundreds of thousands of young students who marched for the environment in September last year.
Grossman has made a fascinating documentary, not flashy but marked out by its quiet observational strength. It has a good score, too, which adds to its power. Ultimately, I Am Greta is not ‘preachy’ but it is safe to assume that the filmmaker is a bit perplexed by the venom directed at this dog and horse-loving teenage girl. He would agree that, “We should all have a bit of Asperger’s when it comes to climate change.”
Screenwriters: Based on an idea and concept by Olof Berglind, story edited by Peter Modestij.
Principal cast:
Greta Thunberg
Svante Thunberg
Malena Ernman
António Guterres
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Country: Sweden
Classification: CTC
Runtime: 97 mins.
Australian release date: 16 October 2020.
“No-one is doing anything, so I must do what I can.” - Greta Thunberg
Starting in August 2019, on board the racing yacht transporting Greta Thunberg to the 2019 Climate Change Conference at the UN in New York, I Am Greta opens with the young activist musing that sometimes the events of the previous few months seem as if they occurred in a dream. The filmmaker, Nathan Grossman, then takes us back to a year earlier, to August 2018, when Thunberg’s ‘School Strike for the Climate’ began outside the Swedish parliament in Stockholm. He had unfettered access to the teenager for around twelve months, which gave him (and us) an unfiltered, fly-on-the-wall look at the life and work of this brave girl. And she really is still a girl, a sweet kid with all the usual doubts and concerns of a 15 and 16-year-old, despite her intense conviction about the dangers to the world of climate change. This laser-like focus, of course, stems from her well-documented Asperger’s Syndrome. What she is not, despite Fox News’ description of her in a clip used in I Am Greta, is a “mentally ill child.” Her own assessment of herself is more apt - she proudly declares that, “I am a nerd.”
Grossman began to film Thunberg from the very first day of her strike, when she was alone with her hand-written sign. Watching her discreetly, he was immediately impressed by her grasp of the issues as she spoke to passers-by, one of whom, an elderly woman, berates her for not being in school. Gradually, the lone activist was joined by others her own age until, Friday by Friday, the crowd around her grew and television crews began to cover the weekly event, spreading knowledge and awareness about this small girl and her global cause. Before long, she was being asked to travel to Katowice, Poland, to address world leaders at COP24. Thus began a period of intense train travel (Thunberg refuses to fly because of the emissions it produces) across northern Europe, always accompanied by her doting father, Svante, and it’s in these scenes that we learn much about her daily life. Her autism can cause her to withdraw into herself if things get too overwhelming; she goes quiet and refuses to eat. At one stage we see her dad desperately trying to get her to eat a banana when she is starting to become anxious - he recognises the signs of her discomfort and tries to stop them before they get too great. We also see how determined she can be, despite her vulnerabilities, and that she writes all her own speeches, refusing Svante’s assistance. As he explains, “she knows 97% more about climate change than most politicians.”
I Am Greta is not totally one-sided, however, and we hear plenty of quotes from Thunberg’s detractors. Australia features quite prominently at one stage, with clips from Sky News featuring those prominent climate change deniers Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones. Even the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, crops up, condemning the hundreds of thousands of young students who marched for the environment in September last year.
Grossman has made a fascinating documentary, not flashy but marked out by its quiet observational strength. It has a good score, too, which adds to its power. Ultimately, I Am Greta is not ‘preachy’ but it is safe to assume that the filmmaker is a bit perplexed by the venom directed at this dog and horse-loving teenage girl. He would agree that, “We should all have a bit of Asperger’s when it comes to climate change.”