The Age of Stupid

The Age Of Stupid has just opened on 78 screens across the UK - a remarkable feat for a genre-defying independent feature made on a shoe string, funded by ordinary households and distributed with a launch budget of just £130,000. To put this in perspective, An Inconvenient Truth opened in 2006 on just 18 screens and a typical UK-wide release spends around £650,000 telling people to go and see their film.

So why all the fuss?

Four years ago McLibel director Fanny Amstrong and producer Lizzie Gillett set about making a documentary called (at the time) Crude, which charted the ugly side of the oil industry. Fast forward to 2009 and the project has finally emerged as a surprisingly human and touching call-to-arms about climate change called Age Of Stupid.

The film opens in 2055 with Pete Postlethwaite, archivist of a ruined earth, looking back at images of the present day, trying to answer the question of why humanity didn't save itself when it had the chance. Archival news material and animated sequences are used to provide background and context, but the focus is on documentary stories of real people facing the effects of our hunger for fossil fuels.

As a result, the film does not labour under the burden of attempting to sway the undecided through facts and figures - though it's possible that even Sarah Palin herself could not fail to be affected by the story of Fernand Pareau, an octogenarian French mountain guide, showing us the glacier he loves as it withers away before his eyes.

As we explore the ageing archivist's question, we encounter "not in my back yard" anti-wind farm protesters, committed climate change activists and an entrepreneur who dreams of ending poverty by starting India's third budget airline. Blame is ultimately laid at the feet of our culture of consumerism, and the implication is that profound social changes will be required to survive the present age - poignantly exemplified in a sequence involving Alvin DuVernay, a hurricane Katrina survivor who, having lost all of his possessions, philosophically reflects on what it took for him to realise what was actually important to him.

At the time of writing, around half of the IMDb votes have given the film a rating of 9 or 10 and around a quarter have given it rating of 1. This polarisation is not about artistic merit, but between those for whom the film has deeply resonated and those who find it confronting and uncomfortable.

I've read some complaints about the film being preachy, and it is certainly true that there is forceful criticism of – say – Shell's operations in the Niger delta and the Iraq war. There is no attempt to present any positive outcome of these interventions, but then I'm not expecting a rush of filmmakers wanting to fill this particular gap in the market.

In general the voices of dissent come from the mouths of those directly affected, and indeed it is the human face of these stories that is one of the film's engaging strengths. History's witness is not always the great orator we want it to be, but over 90 minutes the film manages to maintain a good pace and link the various threads together.

The Age Of Stupid has dispensed with convention in a multitude of ways, not the least of which is the way it has forced its way onto our screens, seemingly through sheer force of will alone. Ultimately the merit of the film is not about the quality of editing or its performances, but its transformational potential. I genuinely think that many viewers will leave the cinema and, like Alvin DuVernay, start to question the world which surrounds them, and it is this quality which makes The Age Of Stupid a truly remarkable film.

... and also thanks to the ratings and comments on the message board. (i want to point out that there was a lot more negative ratings/comments about this movie when i first reviewed it)

the film shows multiple stories which cover different aspects of how people contribute climate change and how they are affected in return. the nice thing is that it isn't a emotionally distanced documentary that just shows the results in a rather cold manner but also shows motivations of people and parts of their personal life.

a similar assumption to the one being made at the end of "diary of the dead" is being made in this movie: maybe humanity isn't worth saving. this thought is underlined by examples of ignorant and egotistical people.

some here say the movie is preachy - i think it is not preachy enough. you can't break the brainwashing of stupidity outlets like fox news with just showing facts. there should be texts saying "YOU are killing people right now". well, maybe not quite as harsh but still... the majority of the people need a metaphorical slap in the face to wake them up.

which brings me to the way in which this movie has changed my thoughts (and behavior). while watching these idiots protest a wind farm because their precious "view" might be destroyed, something finally clicked. i always knew that the majority of people are like that but the thing is - there is no appealing to them. their comfort is more important than anything else. and because of that, humanity truly deserves to perish. i've always tried to help and my biggest goal in life was to somehow improve life for people - but i now realize that they don't deserve it.

Every single economy, developed, developing, underdeveloped, Marxist, socialist, social welfare, mixed or full market depends on growth. Increasing population either through reproduction or immigration is the most destructive thing for the planet. That does mean more carbon, more plastic, more pollutants in general, more pavement, more disease transmission -- you name it.

The single best solution for global warming and stress on the planet in general is well understood: Higher level so education for poor women -- specially in the underdeveloped world. the more educated a woman is the longer she differs first pregnancy and the less kids she has.

This film does not address the core issues at all but is a whining, self righteous preaching to the choir so people spend a few pounds, euros or dollars to see it feel like they did something -- when they did NOTHING. The theater I saw this at in the UK was AIR CONDITIONED

On the surface, Franny Armstrong's 'The Age of Stupid' may seem like just another 'save the planet' type documentary that follows Al Gore's now overrated 'An Inconvenient Truth' but it does make some relevant points particularly on how this effects the developing countries and the common citizen of developed countries (in this day of consumerism when too much is changing too fast). Armstrong takes a look at how some cultures are affected using individual examples. For example, there's the aspiring doctor Layefa Malemi who lives in a poverty stricken region where even clean water is a scarcity and then there's the businessman Jeh Wadia who's working hard to launch his airline company to provide the 'ordinary citizen' with the option to commute through flight. I wonder how affordable the price is made for the ordinary working population. In addition, through an Iraqi family Armstrong also looks at how war, in addition to causing human loss can cause severe environmental damage that may lead to chronic difficulties. At the same time the writer also attempts to show us the other perspective as is the case of Indian businessman Jeh Wadia who appears to start a new airline company to facilitate travelling for the working class citizen (even though the point is made that planes cause severe pollution). On the technical front, it's well shot and edited. The special effects are quite decent and with the legendary Pete Posthlewaite little can go wrong.

The Age of Stupid is a film about climate change, but it's not An Inconvenient Truth: Part Deux. Whereas the purpose of Al Gore's 2006 box office hit was to shake us from our slumber of self-comforting denial, Stupid is designed to take hold of our heads and smash our faces repeatedly into a table until we get up and do things differently.

It's indicative of how the debate has shifted over the last few years that Stupid does not spend time linking climate change with greenhouse gas emissions. The film states that less than 1% of climate scientists believe that there is any doubt about that link (even if this number rises to 60% when the general public are asked their opinion). The debate is over at long last, so the intention of Stupid is to use human stories to illustrate what a serious pickle our species has got itself into.

Stupid is mostly a documentary following the very different lives of six individuals and families around the world. The subjects include an oil geologist who lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, attempting to deal with the devastation of losing everything he owned to a natural disaster that was probably worsened by the burning of oil that he discovered.

Stupid is immaculately produced, carefully involving the audience in the on screen emotions, from sharing the heartbreak of the elderly French mountain guide witnessing a glacier recede, to the frustrated anger of the environmentalist whose wind farm had been blocked by a local NIMBY campaign.

Linking the documentaries together is a series of animated fact files from Passion Pictures (famous for the Gorrilaz) and an innovative fictional subplot starring Pete Postlethwaite. Postlethwaite plays the role of an archivist in 2055, responsible for curating a climate-proof store of human culture, history and scientific discovery, as well as two pickled specimens of every creature on Earth. At this stage, the planet is all-but uninhabitable and the archivist creates the film as a warning for whichever civilisation finally inherits the Earth.

Stupid focuses on the idea that it was our behaviour in the years up to 2015 that caused unstoppable climate change, culminating in the near- extinction of life by the middle of the century. Postelthwaite's character struggles to comprehend quite why we did nothing to stop our own suicide even when we knew that we could.

So is it a good film? Yes, it's bordering on the brilliant. At times it made me laugh, at other times it filled me with tears, and at one point I literally swung my fist in anger at the Daily Mail worshipping, house price obsessed, anti-wind lobbyists. Stupid isn't perfect; I felt that a couple of the documentary subjects distracted from the main issue of climate change by focusing on the evils of Big Oil. However, I would still challenge anyone who sees this film to leave the cinema without a fire in their belly.

Sadly, The Age of Stupid has not been seen by many people. It is an independent film which was funded entirely by small contributions from public investors. As such, it hasn't had the benefit of large distribution networks and, three weeks after release, is only now available at a few commendable cinemas. I shared the experience with 13 other people at the Panton St Odeon in London. Elsewhere, Horne and Corden's Lesbian Vampire Killers was probably playing to a full house. The Age of Stupid sounds like quite an apt title to me.