The Ants and the Grasshopper review – from Malawi to the US to fight climate crisis
This is about Malawian farmer Anita Chitaya and her efforts to change minds in her village and in the US. In Bwabwa, the village where she lives, intelligent and infinitely patient Anita has persuaded her husband to help her raise crops on their single acre of poor soil and help with the household chores that are usually considered women’s work, no small feat given years ago he saw it as his right to abduct her into marriage, thereby scotching Anita’s dream of becoming a nun. With friends and supporters, Anita is trying to convince her staunchly patriarchal male neighbour to follow her husband’s lead and help the women, especially since the hardscrabble farming they must do is getting even harder thanks to the climate crisis causing droughts and floods.
Guided by film-makers Raj Patel and Zak Piper, Anita and several other Malawians head to the US where they try to convince some farmers in Iowa, for instance, that the climate crisis will soon affect everyone. The Jackson family, who are Presbyterians like Anita, listen sympathetically but suspect all this fuss about the climate is just something people in suits in Washington are getting worked up about. They are organic farmers, who you would have thought would be inclined to listen to Anita’s message. Other folk that the Malawians meet in Oakland, Detroit and near Washington DC are more receptive, but it’s still an uphill struggle to get people to listen.
The film ends on some uplifting notes of optimism, metaphorically and literally given the little ascendant tinkly triplets on the soundtrack. The crumbs of optimism it sprinkles on the audience are probably a commercial necessity in order to ensure this film gets some kind of distribution, or even just exposure on the festival circuit. But it sometimes seems forced and riddled with false equivalences. For example, we see Chitaya coming out of a meeting with Senator Jeff Merkley, rather downhearted by their conversation, and then it’s revealed that two years later he co-sponsored the Green New Deal with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, almost implying that we have Anita to thank for what was, in legislative terms, a nonevent. Still, as a film to show young people perhaps, or those just starting to question their thoughts about the climate crisis, this might be an effective consciousness raiser.
• The Ants and the Grasshopper is released on 23 September in cinemas.