The Age of Stupid

(2009)
Its a simple premise; we are directly contributing to destroying the Earths climate thanks to the way we conduct our lives. If you dont believe this, stop reading. No hard feelings, we all believe certain things, but to subscribe to the notion at this point that we humans are not directly making things worse on our Earth is choosing not to believe the truth (and despite my love of being right, I would love to be wrong on this one, really. Pity Im not). The Age of Stupid stars Pete Posthlethwaite as an archivist in the year 2055 examining his computer records on exactly why the Earth has more or less fallen apart climactically. He then presents us in the guise of his files video clips showing exactly where we stand not only on global heating, but on what or more accurately, what were not doing about it. The documentary (all footage other than Postlethwaite is real documentary footage with real people) follows several different people an African woman whose village has been destroyed by Shell, an Englishman trying to get a turbine farm erected, an Indian entrepreneur starting up the JetBlue of India; a couple of Iraqi kids; a survivor of Hurricane Katrina; and so on. Yes, there are facts and data analyses included as well, to sort of scientifically support the personal stories being told in the film, but really the most powerful approach that could be taken was: we are shown individual stories about how our utter refusal to wean ourselves off oil before its too late will have disastrous consequences for us. Some of the stories are more moving than others, and Postlethwaites character mostly avoids the grandstanding that, say, Michael Moore would bring to a film like this. The people themselves tell the stories the Iraqi children who barely escaped with their lives when America invaded; the sheer frustration on the Englishmans face when he cannot get a local council to build the wind turbine farm mainly because it spoils the view; the African woman detailing how and where women died in her village, and the empty buildings Shell began but abandoned once the press stopped looking. Most telling, I felt, was the story of a French mountaineer, who explained that when he was a young man one could step off the side of the mountain in the Alps and step right onto the glacier; and now they have to add a new ladder every year so you can climb down to the ever-diminishing little patch of ice that is left. At this point each of us has his own thoughts on global heating and how serious it might or might not be, and if you didnt know where I stood before this, you sure do now. While this was a particularly well-crafted wake-up call, it also addressed the futility of hoping someone else will just come along and solve the problem for us, which is apparently how most people tend to address the situation. The film offers no easy answers, as there arent any. I found it worked as both a warning to those not taking this issue seriously, and educational for those of us who are. Most people probably wont see this movie, and thats a shame, not only because its an

excellent film, but because if more of us wake up and demand something be done, theres a slightly better chance that maybe something will; because, frankly, the younger you are, the longer you will have to live in the world thats going to emerge from the one we are so busy burning up right now. September 6, 2010