The Age of Stupid

[Dr_Evil_Mouse]

This looks good - fresh off the film fest run.

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In 2055, when London is under water, Vegas under sand, Sydney on fire and the Taj Mahal in ruins, we meet The Archivist (Pete Postlethwaite), a sad-eyed man, the last one left on earth, who lives in a tower off Norway. He examines archival footage using touch-screen technology to find out why it was that people in 2009 did nothing to stop the eco-catastrophe that was staring them in the face.

Although The Archivist is fictional, his ‘archives’ of 2009 are real, the work of director Franny Armstrong. She is an astute journalist, travelling the world to track down both people and communities that can illuminate her central question: how can consumerism and all the social and psychological destabilisation that it produces be controlled?

The Age Of Stupid is more passionate, more emotionally charged than the Al Gore-fronted An Inconvenient Truth. It makes energetic use of animation in the style of 1970s public information films. Its use of science fiction as a framing device is also both effective and emotional: it’s as if Armstrong hopes that the future can come to the aid of the present. Bold, supremely provocative, and hugely important, her film is a cry from the heart as much as a roar for necessary change.