Mark Reviews Movies: I AM GRETA

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Review by Mark Dujsik | October 22, 2020

Greta Thunberg became a sudden and most unlikely international celebrity, simply because she was passionate and knowledgeable. We need more celebrities like her, for sure—people who are famous for and because of a good cause, whose fame never goes to his or her head or gets in the way of his or her principles, and whose drive has the capacity to inspire countless people. There is, perhaps, no cause more important to the future of humanity and the planet (although, it will, for better or worse, go on without us) than the fight against climate change, and in Thunberg, that cause has a celebrity, a champion, and a real fighter.

There's a big downside to Thunberg's activism, though, and it's that she, only 15 at the time the world first became aware of her, is the one who stood up when so many for so many decades remained seated or looked away from the problem. It shouldn't have gone this way. Teenagers should be worrying about school and making friends and hanging out with their peers and dreaming about what they want to do with their lives. Thunberg should have been doing this, too, and it feels like a crime that adults—of real power and influence in the world or, like the rest of us, of whatever ordinary and everyday power they have in their individual lives—stole that from her.

Thunberg says that herself in one of the many shortened speeches in I Am Greta, a documentary that follows the young activist from her first school strike in 2018 to her appearance at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit (Refusing to fly because of the environmental impact, she took a sailboat across the Atlantic Ocean). The statement—that adults stole her teenage years from her—has been taken out of context by actors of bad faith or intentional deception, claiming that Thunberg was basically admitting she was no more than a tool of adults with variously cryptic agendas in mind.

One does wonder where these people receive the inability of basic comprehension or the gumption to lie so readily and so consistently. We can at least take some solace in the knowledge that Thunberg inevitably will win in the end, either because her activism will lead to the necessary changes that save the planet or because there will come a point at which her alarm-raising will be proven correct. Let's hope, for all of our sakes, that it's the former.

Director Nathan Grossman's film wasn't exclusively made to prove the naysayers, the doubters, or the liars about Thunberg wrong, but it undoubtedly does. Here, we meet a 15-year-old girl from Stockholm, Sweden, who started studying the causes and consequence of climate change of her own accord. The problem was undeniable. The causes were clear. The solutions were apparent. The inaction of her elders in everyday life and in governments across the world was upsetting. She had to do something.

Thunberg started holding a school strike outside of the Swedish parliament building every day, planning for it to continue until the country's upcoming election. That's where the film begins.

A lot of people pass her. Some talk to her, either with encouragement or scolding. A few start to join her, and as the days go on, regular people begin recording the strike, before news agencies start to take notice. It all escalates from there, until Thunberg is internationally famous, spurring on the sense of activism and responsibility in kids around the world, who hold their own strikes and protests for people in power to offer more than words on a crisis that will rob them of their and potentially the planet's future.

That's the thrust of Thunberg's story, which still continues, and the success of Grossman's film is that it remains her story, even as events and her influence span beyond her immediate sphere. We see a montage of youth protests around the world, but we see Thunberg watching those protests with shocked disbelief. We see her appearances before and speeches in front of assorted world leaders, but we see their effect on Thunberg, too. They don't bolster her ego (Indeed, she seems entirely nonplussed and unaffected by the sudden fame), but they do give her plenty of reason for private and, later, public doubts about the sincerity of people in power.

The main reason Thunberg became as famous as she has become, perhaps, is her blunt honesty. She allows her doubts to drive her arguments. Her father, who follows Thunberg on her various appearances, often suggests that she should minimize her criticisms of the people to whom she will be speaking. He's thinking diplomatically. Thunberg has only seen such thinking and statements fail. The failure to act is as much a reason for her disappointment, frustration, and anger as the problem itself.

She has also been honest about having Asperger syndrome, which should be and, hopefully to most, is further cause to celebrate Thunberg's accomplishments (She and her parents explain her problems socializing with other people and not speaking for three years, but here she is, overcoming those challenges in the midst of her work). Those willing to attack a teenager for daring to speak up for a cause and directly to power, though, are not above the cruelty of disparaging Thunberg for that. After Thunberg receives multiple death threats, there's a disheartening scene in which her father goes through a class on emergency situations, and we have to watch him imagine the idea of his daughter being shot.

Through all of this, Grossman simply observes Thunberg, her passion, and her honesty. I Am Greta proves her to be a good kid with a good heart and an unshakable commitment to her values.

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