Film-maker and climate activist Josh Appignanesi brings us a riveting bulletin from the frontline of modernity and postmodernity, from the capital of the 21st century itself: Dubai – a city where “oil money is converted into concrete, glass and false optimism”. It seems to be the place on everyone’s lips, the megalopolis at the centre of contemporary conversation, endlessly and casually invoked as the epitome of heartless capitalism and reactionary politics, a city beyond irony or principled objection. And yet, until now, I don’t think I have seen a film try to show what this extraordinary place actually looks like, with woozy, dreamy, narcotically Ballardian and surreal images of this cityscape in the desert.
Colossal Wreck, with its reference to Shelley that is made explicit at the end, is Appignanesi’s own wryly thoughtful account of his visit to Dubai in 2023, to present a screening of his previous film My Extinction at the 28th UN Climate Change Conference, or Cop28, which was, with staggering effrontery, being staged by a massive oil-producing nation whose politicians thought nothing of actually making discreet oil deals at the conference itself. The film is wonderfully written and mesmerically scored by composer Vik Sharma and narrated off camera by Appignanesi – or rather, it seems, by an AI voice clone. (I had thought that Appignanesi was speaking metaphorically about this fabrication of his speaking self but no, it is literal AI.) And so his physical presence, generally one of genial dishevelment, is largely absent, which has the result of increasing the film’s sense of seriousness.
