Worth: $13.00
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Cast:
Melati Wijsen
Intro:
… could have been delivered with a bit more punch ...
Directed by Meeting Snowden’s Flore Vasseur, and produced by Marion Cotillard, Bigger Than Us is an international snapshot of modern political activism. Specifically, the youth, who are putting in the most work for real change.
Over the last several years, largely off the back of Greta Thunberg’s increasing social profile, the cries of “Go back to school” and “What do children know?” have been as prevalent as they have been eyeroll-inducing.
In Bigger Than Us, Vasseur follows Indonesian-Dutch activist Melati Wijsen on her global search for teens and young adults like herself, fighting the good fight. What is shown here serves as a bladed response to the bad faith “let kids be kids” rhetoric.
The problems captured here and reiterated in the words of the seven highlighted activists, including Melati herself, are varied and plentiful; widespread refugee crises, environmental damage and waste, suffocation of the free press, and ingrained mistreatment of women. The ways that each activist combats them are equally specialised, ranging from education to agriculture to photography and music.
But the reasons for each have a fair amount of overlap.
The fact that these problems obviously affect these people from such an early age means that the cries of ‘let kids be kids’ are redundant. To quote Mary, a worker for Refugee Rescue: “None of us should be here.”
It’s a matter of forced necessity more than anything else, and with what gets shown here, like the child bride culture in Malawi, it’s difficult to argue with. In that vein, hearing each activist discuss their unique obstacles and their respective impetus for action instils a vigour in the film’s overall message.
It is unfortunate, though, that the presentation for all of this is as average as it is. The cinematography does well enough in depicting all the devastation involved, but it can feel rather static, much like a made-for-TV production. It doesn’t help that, for all the information available on-screen, the framing device as a singular production is… well, close to non-existent. There’s something of a throughline in Melati’s international journey, and her relaying parts of it to Mary, but otherwise, it’s more collage than cohesive. Which for a production meant to create a sense of solidarity – that they’re all fighting on different fronts but ultimately for the same cause – cuts into its effectiveness.
Bigger Than Us, in a disappointing show of irony, is a showcase for young activists let down by their respective elders that itself feels let down by the adults behind the camera. Its core ideal is still felt, thanks to the charisma of the subjects on-screen, but so is the sensation that all of this could have been delivered with a bit more punch.
