Josh Appignanesi is the director who has found a jaunty, funny film-making language in low-budget personal work – co-directed with his wife, Devorah Baum – about his crises with status and masculinity. The New Man, from 2016, was about impending fatherhood; Husband, from 2022, showed his complicated feelings about Baum’s career outpacing his. The second was a goofy performance in the autofictional-autofactual grey area; Appignanesi’s cheerfully dishevelled figure was at the centre of almost every shot, sometimes leaving us to wonder if and where he had staged or reconstructed certain important moments – a heightened video-diarising or guided reality.
Now, he has taken what appears to be a quantum leap to a new level of seriousness. A professional setback just before lockdown (the sudden disappearance of funding for a projected feature) leaves him with time on his hands and Appignanesi takes an interest in Extinction Rebellion. He brings his camera to marches and meetings and is soon a deeply committed member, culminating in a triumphant speech at an XR protest outside 55 Tufton Street in central London, the notorious headquarters of climate-denying thinktanks, storming it in front of the crowd. Then his agent offers him a lucrative gig making a TV ad for Esso – and Appignanesi is tempted.
It isn’t that you doubt Appignanesi’s sincerity, although his deadpan facial expression in some of the more emotional XR meetings is sometimes difficult to read. On one march, he finds himself alongside the comedy writer David Schneider; their banter seems to relax him and the film’s punning title demonstrates his comedy instinct.
The question arises whether he has cultivated a kind of Louis Theroux ambiguity in talking to the long-term XR faithful to suppress a mickey-taking impulse, or to create the space for his audience to do the mickey-taking on his behalf. Actually, no; he later tells his wife that people’s testimonies at a certain XR meeting really had brought him close to tears. But there is a disconnect between the importance of what he is talking about and the self-deprecation and throwaway comedy that dominates his style; these worked better with smaller-scale confessionals.
Much though I always enjoy Appignanesi’s performances, the contradiction is not entirely solved. His central message is clear enough: if his career in making heavyweight films is finished, well, what of it? (I don’t believe for a moment that it is; Appignanesi is surely going to make a witty metropolitan comedy in this same minimalist style.) The planet is in danger and that is what we should be thinking about and acting on, rather than worrying about our negligible careers.
• My Extinction is released in UK cinemas on 30 June.
