Film review: My Extinction

What does it take to get people to act on climate change? That’s the question at the heart of My Extinction, an unorthodox documentary about an unlikely journey into activism.

In the opening scene, we meet film-maker Josh Appignanesi in the editing room and working on a car commercial. We hear about a feature film falling through, and while between projects, he idly drops in on Extinction Rebellion protests that are gathering on the streets of London.

Bit by bit he gets drawn in. Initially standing glib and dishevelled on the sidelines, he starts attending meetings, joining in actions, and eventually helping to organise the Writers Rebel sub-group. We see lots of actions close-up, but the film is not about Extinction Rebellion. There are other docs about that. It’s about Josh himself, how he finds a role in the movement, and how it challenges his sense of himself.

This is explored in a hybrid film-making style, part documentary, part fictionalised autobiography. It is to a certain extent staged, in a creative technique that Appignanesi has used in previous films about his own marriage (to the writer Devorah Baum), or their experience of IVF. It’s no less truthful for that, and has moments of grief, embarassment, realisation and awkward humour.

Contributors are incorporated in an imaginative way too. Rather than talking head interviews, various commentators appear more like friends. (Probably because they are. Appignanesi seems quite well connected.) There are conversations in the street. Anouchka Grose, whose book I reviewed here, talks about eco-anxiety at the kitchen table. Author Peter Pomerantsev and Josh discuss denial over a lazy game of tennis in the park. “Their worldviews are complete. It makes sense,” says Peter of climate deniers. “In some ways the nutters are us, because we know the science. We admit that it’s real, and we do bugger all.”

That middle class denial is a theme here, though halfway through the film I felt rather irked at how absent climate justice was from the discussion. It was all about concern for oneself and one’s children, rather than other people’s children suffering now. There are ‘first world problem’ moments such as a tongue in cheek conversation about whether there will be coffee in the future. And there’s the title: My Extinction, as if it’s ‘me’ that matters most.

Fortunately the film-maker knows what he’s doing with this, and addresses it head on. Josh wonders if his new activism is serving as “therapy for white entitled guys who feel like persona non grata,” or a way of coping with disappointment in his professional life. Then there’s a poignant moment where his wife tells him that “it’s embarassing to you that you’re somebody who wants to improve the world. You can’t acknowledge that in yourself, and so you represent yourself as being selfish.”

That rings true. Particularly among men of my generation, it’s just not cool to care about things that matter. There are a limited number of things you can demonstrate an enthusiasm for (cars, technology, football, music) without being weird. Care is undervalued culturally, which is what makes it radical.

There’s plenty to enjoy in the film, including an explanation of how the Coronavirus pandemic quashed the momentum of XR, delivered in a hilarious animation made of Duplo bricks and children’s drawings – just the kind of thing families got up to during lockdown. There’s a surreal moment of a man with a megaphone making speeches to empty shops, declaring that “nothing makes sense any more, but then nothing really did beforehand.” I was pleased to see footage of people painting a guerrilla cycle lane in the middle of the night. And then there’s a final protest action at 55 Tufton Street, home to a “cabal” of right-wing thinktanks and the “portal to darkness” as one participant calls it.

It’s here that the films gets summed up in an eloquent, funny and self-deprecating speech to the crowd. “I started this journey the way men like me often seem to, in a state of confusion, tilting quickly into fury and paranoia,” says Josh. Then he talks about a process of ‘recycling’ his rage into activism. Channeling “the resentment of someone gradually realising he’s no longer going to be considered better and more special than anyone else” into work to make the world a better place for everyone. And so My Extinction is not just an entertaining film about unlikely climate activism. It’s also about middle class angst, masculinity, privilege and entitlement, and how taking climate action might sometimes require us to step up, and sometimes to step aside.