I’m sorry, I’m going to gush: this film is a fantastic achievement.
In a remote Arctic library, in a climate-ruined 2055, an archivist (Pete Postlethwaite) sits down amid the collected remnants of civilisation to create a memoir using footage from the ‘past’ 50 years. This framework allows director Armstrong (of McLibel fame) to tell six different, bang-up-to-date climate change stories – including that of an oil worker whose home was decimated in Hurricane Katrina; that of Jeh, founder of India’s first low-cost airline, and that of Piers, a wind farm developer trying to live sustainably.
Interspersed with animated sequences detailing everything from consumerism to the Iraq war, the film builds a picture of climate change that simply couldn’t be told through any other medium. In some inspired footage, the director allows anti-wind farm campaigners to explain why they object to a new development, shortly before their town is flooded in last year’s unseasonal summer weather.
Sure it’s not absolutely perfect: Postlethwaite’s dialogue is a little overwrought and his dystopian setting over-egged, but hell – Al Gore won an Oscar for interspersing a slide show with shots of himself in a plane with a laptop. This film knocks spots off An Inconvenient Truth and well deserves a full cinematic release.
Mark Anslow
The Age of Stupid team has a big bundle of beautiful posters needing to be pinned to every wall in the land. If you have a great spot - an office, a school, a train station, shop window - where lots of people would see it, please email your postal address to rhiannon@ageofstupid.net for your poster. UK only though!
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To find out more about the film and the Not Stupid campaign, visit the site www.ageofstupid.net
