Review: 'The Age of Stupid'

The Age of Stupid, a fictionalized documentary by director Franny Armstrong, is a rueful look back at the present day from the perspective of the year 2055, when human civilization is all but destroyed by global warming and climate change. Though the film's finger-wagging, pessimistic tone may discourage some viewers and alienate others, The Age of Stupid is a smart film that delivers an important message about the perils of climate change in unambiguous terms. Unfortunately, the film's flaws will leave much of its audience uninspired to actually do anything about what is becoming the defining issue of our time.

If you like your apocalypse served raw, have I got a movie for you. The city of Sydney, Australia, is ravaged by wildfires, its iconic Opera House engulfed in flames. The streets of London are a muddy swamp. Las Vegas has been buried under desert sands.

The Age of Stupid isn't the kind of film that shies away from showing the future in all its bleak, lifeless glory. By the year 2055, human civilization is all but destroyed, and one of the last remaining humans is the Archivist (Oscar-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite). In a series of documentary flashbacks, he reviews our current era from the solitude of his bunker-like repository of human artifacts, a lofty perch in the storm-tossed Arctic Ocean.

We see the destruction of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina through the eyes of an oilman. The tribulations of a wind energy promoter in rural England are ours to suffer. We witness the human and environmental toll of oil development on the coast of Africa. And through it all, the Archivist asks us -- Postlethwaite's gravely voice creaking with solemnity -- "Why didn't we stop climate change when we had the chance?"

Unfortunately, the film never really addresses that question. Instead, it posits the rather limp theory that perhaps "we weren’t sure we were worth saving." An examination of why we as a species are more reactive than proactive, preferring to implement changes only after disaster strikes, might have been more compelling. (I fear that genuine leadership addressing global climate change will only occur after Florida is entirely underwater, or when millions of white Americans start dying of malaria, as millions of Africans now do.)

Some of the film's premises are on shaky scientific ground. There is, for example, no real scientific basis for believing that the destructive power of Hurricane Katrina was the result of global warming (though hurricanes like Katrina might become more common due to climate change). And demonizing the oil industry is a documentarian's low-hanging fruit -- why were other polluting industries, like agriculture and manufacturing, not represented in the film?

Though the film's premise of a look back through archival film flashbacks is effective, and there are moments of wit and insight, this jeremiad doesn't leave a lasting impression like other, more effective documentaries. Films like Hoop Dreams, Paris Is Burning and An Inconvenient Truth resonated with viewers long after the lights came up; this film, I'll wager, will not. Despite its clever formatting -- and having the best of intentions -- The Age of Stupid is, at best, a reminder of what we should do, but not an inspiration to do it.