Review: I Am Greta Lacks the Urgency of Greta Thunberg’s Crusade

Nathan Grossman’s I Am Greta, about Greta Thunberg and her passionate urging of world leaders to address climate change, isn’t so much an activist documentary as it is one about an activist. As its title signals, Grossman’s film focuses less on the global-warming crisis or the youth-led environmental movement and more on the individual who, over the last two years, has catapulted to the forefront of that movement, in the process raising both the ire and the patronizing admiration of heads of state.

There’s intrinsic value to this individualized approach. It’s certainly worth humanizing a young woman whose well-known Asperger’s diagnosis has led to cruel insinuations from far-right ghouls like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh concerning her mental health and purported manipulability (by her parents, by the socialists, by George Soros, and by whatever vaguely anti-Semitic boogeyman the right has concocted for the moment). Following Thunberg from April 2019 through her storied journey by sailboat to the United States for a United Nations conference in September 2019, Grossman’s camera has expansive access to her life, which in some ways still resembles that of a typical teenager.

We see her father, Svante, adjusting his life to accommodate her schedule and ambitions—waking up early to drive her to summits like she’s on a traveling sports team—and her mother, Malena, packing her lunch and crying with pride at the important woman her daughter, at 16, has already become. As Thunberg’s constant companion, her father features more prominently in the film than her mother. The most affecting footage Grossman captures, in a film full of such intimate moments, is that of Svante taking life-saving classes in case—it goes intrusively unspoken—there’s an attempt on Thunberg’s life. Incidentally, I Am Greta almost turns out to be a movie about the profound selflessness of good dads.

Svante recounts how Thunberg, who often feels overwhelmed and needs to shut off for periods of time, spent almost four years suffering from selective mutism, talking only to her sister and her parents. The purpose she’s found in climate activism appears to have, for the time, cured her of the worst of her recalcitrance—evidenced not only by the way she’s able to speak with confidence on some of the world’s biggest stages, but also by the new connections she’s able to forge with other youth climate activists throughout Europe. I Am Greta shows that her unlikely transformation into the de facto leader of a millions-strong movement possesses the heroic, poetic irony that the condition that can make social life a struggle for her also forms a part of her personality that makes her uncompromising drive, and thus her rise, possible.

Less inspiring are the looks Grossman gives us at the diplomacy behind Thunberg’s stirring speeches. We get, for example, extended footage of Thunberg’s much-publicized meeting with Emmanuel Macron. The French president’s fluffy, patronizing questions show just how seriously he takes the Swedish teen, but Thunberg doesn’t come off particularly well in such footage either, speaking in broad generalities—at least in the footage Grossman includes. In any case, it becomes clearer than it’s ever been—at least to this viewer—that Europe’s leaders consider her nothing more than a photo op, a prop to make it look like they’re taking action. Thunberg also recognizes this: “I honestly don’t understand why I am even invited,” is her distraught confession after Jean-Claude Juncker, former president of the European Commission, essentially ignores her speech in front of the E.U. Parliament.

With its uplifting images of Thunberg standing in front of both crowds of protestors and global leaders, one gets the sense that I Am Greta aims to be inspirational, but in terms of creating hope for action on climate change, it mainly provokes frustration—the very feeling that brings Thunberg to tears in front of the U.N. General Assembly. What the film reveals, perhaps accidentally, is that as brave and selfless as Thunberg truly is, the powerful do not listen to her. Even those who seem to be well intentioned—such as Arnold Schwarzenegger—respond to her argument for a wholistic approach to climate change with empty nonsense like, “No, absolutely, connecting the dots is a very good point.”

Such moments are revealing, no doubt, but it’s also at such points that I Am Greta feels less substantial than it might have been. It’s too resolutely focused on crafting an ode to its subject, something that’s already been accomplished by a million think pieces and tweets. Lionizing an individual makes it seem a bit too much like she has arrived to save us all, that her struggle is enough. Even though it’s about a person who speaks with courage about the urgency of the global crisis, I Am Greta itself doesn’t possess enough of that urgency.