An activist film that dares ask why most of us continue to ignore the omens of impending ecological catastrophe, The Age of Stupid stirred great interest upon its theatrical release in the U.K. even if its sci-fi framework doesn’t work as a dramatic device. Pete Postlethwaite, playing the curmudgeonly curator of a Global Archive containing all the works of humanity and nature—every book and creature—looks back from 2055 on a world that has become largely uninhabitable. But in between his clench-jawed pronouncements, he scrolls through actual video on the state of things c. 2010 along with imaginatively animated history lessons on how we got here.
It’s a message film delivered without subtlety, but the message is one we need to keep hearing. It reminds us that while we live in a plastic world of petroleum products whose producers exert an inordinate influence over politics and economics, many of us are also to blame for embracing the nihilism of consumerism—an ideology of rationalized greed that refuses to admit that endless expansion in a finite world is impossible. The Age of Stupid also documents efforts by some people to limit their carbon use and urges massive protests. Governments and corporations won’t act decisively to stop the slide toward ecological calamity unless the majority of citizens loudly demand it—and demand it over and over again.
The Age of Stupid is out on DVD with bonus disc including a making-of documentary and short films on environmentalism.
