Rebellion | Little White Lies

Rebel­lion

15 Mar 2022 / Released: 18 Mar 2022

Words by Adam Solomons

Directed by Elena Sanchez and Maia Kenworthy

Starring N/A

Crowded street scene with large statue in the background, surrounded by a large number of protesters holding placards and banners.
Crowded street scene with large statue in the background, surrounded by a large number of protesters holding placards and banners.
3

Anticipation.

The pandemic helped a lot of us forget the urgency of climate change. A cinematic reminder couldn’t hurt.

3

Enjoyment.

Gripping personal stories outweigh the dullness of a process-heavy perspective.

2

In Retrospect.

Too kind to XR’s bourgeois impulses, it neglects key characters and weaves an all-too-convenient narrative.

This fly-on-the-wall doc­u­men­tary is a dicey, dis­ap­point­ing look at the incen­di­ary eco-rebels known as Extinc­tion Rebellion.

Did we use youthquake” too ear­ly? Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies baf­fled the nation when they select­ed the kooky com­pound for 2017’s word of the year, appar­ent­ly prompt­ed by Labour’s impres­sive per­for­mance in the May gen­er­al elec­tion and the new­found influ­ence of young peo­ple” worldwide.

By spring 2019, that choice appeared pre­scient. Cit­ing the old­er generation’s per­ilous iner­tia on cli­mate change, tens of thou­sands of school pupils, led by envi­ron­men­tal activist Gre­ta Thun­berg, strolled out of lessons in 125 coun­tries. At the same time, a rad­i­cal new group of civ­il dis­obey­ers called Extinc­tion Rebel­lion, or XR, were plot­ting to bring Lon­don to a halt.

Rebel­lion, a BFI-fund­ed doc­u­men­tary direct­ed by Maia Ken­wor­thy and Ele­na Sanchez, is the most inti­mate look yet at XR’s extra­or­di­nary highs and lows, its wacky behind-the-scenes oper­a­tions and the per­son­al strife which final­ly sent the group’s domi­noes falling.

Strik­ing­ly unglam­orous fly-on-the-wall footage from key meet­ings gives the film a sense of bru­tal hon­esty – or at least the guise of it. Co-founders Roger Hal­lam and Gail Brad­brook, along­side ear­ly influ­encers Sam Knights and Farhana Yamin, state mat­ter-of-fact­ly which build­ings cam­paign­ers should glue them­selves to; why civ­il dis­obe­di­ence is the last pos­si­ble option; how many arrests would achieve cut-through”.

To start with, this nar­ra­tive is unde­ni­ably arrest­ing (no pun intend­ed). Farhana’s sto­ry is par­tic­u­lar­ly grip­ping: an expe­ri­enced cli­mate lawyer who attend­ed 22 of the UN’s first 24 COP cli­mate con­fer­ences, she realised busi­ness-as-usu­al wasn’t work­ing. She joined XR to try a more rad­i­cal approach and, as her hus­band and chil­dren looked on proud­ly, glued her­self to the floor by the Shell Build­ing as part of the group’s head­line-grab­bing April Rebellion.

Job done? Not quite. As the poor­ly received Heathrow drone stunt flops, rifts emerge over what to do next. Mem­bers who climb on top of rush-hour Tube car­riages, includ­ing elec­tric DLR trains, are not greet­ed as lib­er­a­tors. XR’s hip­py hor­i­zon­tal” struc­ture, dic­tat­ing that the group has no for­mal lead­er­ship, doesn’t help. And Hal­lam makes the news for the wrong rea­sons, includ­ing a strange asser­tion that the Holo­caust was nor­mal” by human stan­dards. (This state­ment, and its pub­lic fall­out, curi­ous­ly doesn’t fea­ture in the doc­u­men­tary at all.)

Either way, XR can­not be said to have suc­ceed­ed. Some of its best-known mem­bers, includ­ing Savan­nah Hal­lam (Roger’s daugh­ter), aren’t even sure whether they were right to join in the first place. As the bal­loon deflates, we’re left think­ing it might all have been a waste of time. Cam­paign­er Ale­jan­dra Piaz­zol­la points out, use­ful­ly, that XR has been strange­ly nar­row-mind­ed, pro­vid­ing few prac­ti­cal solu­tions and ignor­ing the plight of the cli­mate-vul­ner­a­ble abroad. This is true, but – like Roger – Rebel­lion appears unwill­ing to reflect.

What’s most egre­gious, how­ev­er, is that the youthquake at the heart of XR is essen­tial­ly ignored. Thun­berg fea­tures in a soli­tary shot, while the school strike isn’t men­tioned at all. Pre­sum­ably that’s because it doesn’t fit the nar­ra­tive: the young­sters’ walk­out took place in March 2019, a month before XR’s April Rebel­lion. Opt­ing to lionise its colour­ful char­ac­ters, Rebel­lion tells a neater and, frankly, less true sto­ry than it ought to have done. Though it makes a good point, this isn’t the way to go about it.

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