Following Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum’s video-diarised feature, Husband (2023), they turn their attention to the climate crisis. From the marital home to the streets of London, My Extinction excels in documenting the transformation of a down-on-his-luck writer to an Extinction Rebellion activist.
★★★★✰
When Josh Appignanesi loses funding for his next feature film, he looks outwards for direction. Appignanesi and his wife Devorah Baum document their experience with the climate activist group, Extinction Rebellion (XR). Starting off with caution, their explorations of the science, the politics, and the different sectors within XR lead them to their place in the movement. My Extinction is a video-diary feature that organically captures the making of two environmental rebels. The couple takes us on a fascinating journey with them. They allow us to think through (and feel through) the traumatic knowledge of climate change together. As they flit between XR’s direct action and intimate chats in their living room, we learn and develop our understanding of climate change alongside them.
My Extinction is not the first collaborative piece between Josh Appignanesi and Devorah Baum. Their previous explorations of masculinity and fatherhood took on the same sardonic but equally complex feel in The New Man (2016) and Husband. This time, Appignanesi turns his attention to the XR movement. In their usual low-budget personalised style, Appignanesi and Baum document their process of grappling with the severity of the climate crisis and the means of doing something about it.
The film starts when Appignanesi loses funding for a feature film. He finds himself in a dead-end teaching job, anticipating the end of his creative endeavours for the foreseeable future. His reluctant involvement with XR seems as good a way of passing the time as any. As he discusses climate change with a range of activists from anti-natalists to seasoned XR-road-blockers, Appignanesi finds his place within XR as part of the ‘Writers Rebel’ group. Soon, his ventures lead to him and Baum giving impassioned speeches outside 55 Tufton Street, the nest of powerful climate-denialist lobbyists and think-tanks.
Before taking on Tufton, his emotional journey feels like the environmental everyman: perpetual confusion around the science followed by immobilising dread and a dash of cynical inaction. Many activists and activists-to-be must consider how much they can afford to put into a movement. Can you afford to get arrested? Can you afford to go to protests? Can you afford to shed the denial of a full-blown climate crisis?
Appignanesi starts off with an uneasy and unserious approach to Extinction Rebellion. He makes mocking comments at marches and looks totally out of his depth at emotionally intense XR meetings. This combination of Appignanesi’s cynicism as a knocked-down artist and XR’s collective meditations is rather jagged. Particularly, brief and awkward discussions with fringe activists such as anti-natalists fall a little flat as it ultimately goes nowhere and seems to be a redundant discussion among parents.
But ultimately, this is what reels us in. The ability to undertake the journey with him, to have the comfortable tea-chats with Baum where we test our assumptions and the power we have as individuals. The hopelessness, denial, and egotism of educated people is broken down and rebuilt again in the cosy living room of a communicative married couple.
This video-diarising of this psychological arc is refreshing to see. It has a personal and tangible feel. We often see conversations around climate change in intimidating spaces like in the middle of the protests themselves, academic lectures and press conference disruptions. But My Extinction offers a much warmer and inviting space to discuss our values. These important conversations can happen while you are having a yoghurt or a cup of tea.
This juxtaposition between homely warmth and overwhelming protests flourishes in the film’s cinematography. Cups of tea and bare feet in a lamp-lit living room give us the comfort to mull over intimidating issues. But the harsh light of day at a crowded protest is the place to put those ideas to the test. We also see the same in XR meetings: warm and open discussions at the village hall are put into practice on windswept and police-patrolled streets of London.
While the film progresses, the sardonic, mickey-taking tone of Appignanesi slips away. After a couple of tea-chats, the couple enter the next protest with more verve and rigour as they gain confidence. This is the beauty of the film; it sets out to take us on the journey to rebellion together by documenting their own experience with XR.
The Verdict
Overall, My Extinction is a candid and sincere effort to separate the artist’s ego from the XR movement. Although we see a few confused wobbles in the vastness of the movement, My Extinction successfully brings us along on their exploration of the climate crisis. The protests are exhausting and never definitively put the climate emergency to bed. Newspapers and tabloids were notoriously uncharitable to their direct action. The accolades may never come your way.
When a lucrative opportunity arises that is markedly against your values, it is tempting to take it. It’s easy to dismiss these challenges as the conceited whining of the privileged classes. However, they are real human obstacles to tackle when advocating for global change and I for one greatly appreciate their acknowledgement.
Words by Elizabeth Sorrell
Support The Indiependent
We’re trying to raise £200 a month to help cover our operational costs. This includes our ‘Writer of the Month’ awards, where we recognise the amazing work produced by our contributor team. If you’ve enjoyed reading our site, we’d really appreciate it if you could donate to The Indiependent. Whether you can give £1 or £10, you’d be making a huge difference to our small team.