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3 hours ago
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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.
There were calamitous flash-flood disasters in Dubai before and after the conference, but while Appignanesi was there everything was eerie perfection, an uncanny valley of hyper-prosperous consumerist placidity. Appignanesi is too discreet and high-minded to say it, but Dubai and its Expo City are, simply, film-making gold: everywhere you point your camera – or, for that matter, iPhone – presents an amazing spectacle. It is like a city-state-sized airport duty free shop crossed with a Kubrickian spaceship. Appignanesi introduces My Extinction and gamely participates in a Q&A afterwards to a modest audience. (He drolly records his resentment of the greater audience and industry support for Josh Tickell, another film-maker there.) And he also shows us an indigenous speaker from Brazil’s Guarani people, Valdelice Veron, speaking with passion about her people being wiped out, the documentary’s one moment of un-anaesthetised emotion.
The film allows us to ponder the single, ridiculous subject: what on earth is everyone else doing here? The activists are massively outnumbered by the bankers and the fossil-fuel shills who are solemnly here to hide their raison d’etre in plain sight. The keynote is that floating, outer-space sensation of something very strange indeed: a message from the future. We see the vista of Dubai and its towers (Appignanesi calls them “gargantua of insignificance”) from the top of the world’s tallest building to the disquietingly beautiful accompaniment of whale song. Could something positive emerge, almost by accident, from this circus? Or is humanity more than half in love with its own extinction, addicted as it is to the business of living and using everything up? (I personally don’t think this is the case.) But this is Appignanesi’s best documentary yet.
