The Age of Stupid (2009)

Directed by: Franny Armstrong | 89 minutes | war, documentary, history | Actors: Jamila Bayyoud, Adnan Bayyoud, Alvin DuVernay, Piers Guy, Layefa Malini, Fernand Pareau, Pete Postlethwaite, Jeh Wadia

The world is breaking down and we have to save it. Al Gore already indicated this with his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ (2006) and Leonardo DiCaprio once again brought the climate problem to the attention of the unwary viewer in ‘The 11th Hour’ (2007). Both films tried with an abundance of evidence to convince the viewer of the disastrous situation in which the world finds itself.

‘The Age of Stupid’ takes a different approach. No scientists talking, no difficult calculations and graphs. The documentary takes global warming as a fact. enough! While this is still a debatable point, it seems only logical to assume the worst. The film makers are therefore forgiven for this carelessness. It is 2055 and the world has now come to an end. The archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) records a message on his computer from the last terrestrial bastion, the Wereldmuseum in which as much art treasures and biological material as possible are collected. That he is still amazed that the signs were so clear, but that humanity has not stopped the climate problem. Until it was too late. The man wants to go through the signals again at the beginning of the twenty-first century of the large-scale problem facing the world’s population.

In six largely separate stories, a few different people are introduced, each of whom view the climate problem in their own way. For example, we meet the Indian entrepreneur Jeh Wadia, who wants to set up a low-cost airline based on the noble aim of being able to offer the very poorest a form of luxury. Or with the Englishman Piers Guy, a developer of wind farms, who can’t start building because local residents invariably complain about the loss of their view. (But, as one fanatic lady explains, they all pay attention to sustainability!).

We also get to know a French mountain guide who has been watching the glaciers shrink for years, an American Shell employee and also a survivor (and hero) of Hurricane Katrina, a Nigerian Medicine student and an eight-year-old Iraqi boy who has developed a hatred for America. Many stories are connected by oil and money, the two biggest culprits according to the documentary makers. For example, the war in Iraq is said to have started over oil and the projects that oil producer Shell would start up in Nigeria (hospitals and the like) have been halted for years. The wealth of oil ultimately only makes the poor population poorer and the rich elite only richer. The archivist repeatedly evokes fragments of the life stories of these people. He does this by means of a touchscreen, so that he literally always points his finger at the viewer. A nice find from the filmmakers.

What becomes particularly clear from the stories is the dilemma between convenience and luxury on the one hand and sustainability on the other. For example, as Piers Guy explains: by plane you save a lot of time, but you cause major environmental damage. To which the Indian Wadia adds that you should not look at one specific industry when it comes to the climate problem. He is also involved in sustainability in his own way, but he wants to work for the poor with cheap flights.

By omitting science or presenting it in a simple cartoon style, ‘The Age of Stupid’ does not fall into the same trap as its two predecessors, namely that the audience only gets tired of all the numbers. The approach here is to make the climate issue as personal as possible, and the filmmakers have been very successful at that. The fact that the film has become very pedantic because of this is a risk that they apparently wanted to take. The only drawback is that the film offers no solutions, but merely signals the problem. Whether this will really make a difference remains to be seen.