Dir. Franny Armstrong, UK, 2009, 92mins
Cast: Pete Postlethwaite, Piers Guy, Jamila Bayyoud
Review by Christopher Upton
We're all going to die! That's the message documentarian Franny Armstrong is sending out. The Age of Stupid is set in a future in which humanity is no longer, killed by our won greed and ignorance there is nothing left but water. Still there is a spark of hope that suggests we, as a society, can change the world before it's too late.
Pete Postletwhaite is ‘The Archivist', the man asking the pertinent question, where did it all go wrong? From his lofty perch in the Antarctic he has access to all archived footage post-millennium and is analysing our activities to see if he can see a way in which we could have changed this bleak and frightening future.
Obvious connections to An Inconvenient Truth aside, Armstrong has attempted an entirely different beast. While Truth showed exactly what damage we are doing and what we need to do in the future; Age of Stupid by comparison suggests that it is already far too late and attempts to deliver a much more drastic, dynamic and terrifying warning.
As such, upon its initial release it was lauded with praise in its selfless drive to save us from ourselves. I visited one of the eco-friendly premiere screenings of this film, and the audience in the screening probably won't have changed from the audience that will buy this DVD, which is a large problem. The ones who enjoy this film and take its message to heart have already made up their mind and are already following its important core message. This leaves the uninitiated, the ones who need to be reached more desperately, to continue to pay no attention.
While obviously it will reach some of these, Stupid makes hardly any effort to try and engage with this audience. It is a massively unfriendly piece of cinema, which might seem perfectly acceptable considering its subject matter, but when there is constant hectoring and talking down to the audience any hope of creating converts goes completely out the window. What you're left with, if you take away Postlethwaite's vicious commentary, is a documentary about the world's problems today; unfortunately this documentary cannot stand up on its own.
Seemingly unable to find its correct pitch the sections flit around unconnectedly; one moment the audience is expected to find the audacity of council officials hilarious as they once again cancel green schemes. Then without warning we are feeling extreme guilt over a war fought in our name over the subjects of oil and control. These tonal shifts are extremely violent and throw off any sort of coherence the audience could grasp onto. If the aim is to create the sort of mass confusion which our planet will soon be suffering from as we become nothing but an ex-planet, then its success is tremendous; but this is hardly palatable.
The film defends its extremely hectoring tone by stating repeatedly that this is a project intended to save the world. The world probably does need a sharp shock to wake up before it's too late, yet this shock could have been handled much better. An hour and a half of travel expo and finger pointing appears to be no match for a man and his PowerPoint; an example that sometimes the simplest things can change the world.
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