Since I watched Franny Armstrong’s “The Age of Stupid” again one evening last week, I’ve been thinking about what a good pair it forms with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”. These are films are united not only by their topic, climate change, but also by their purpose, raising our awareness that everyday actions and decisions now are critically important to our planet’s future. Ironically, these films are a good pair not only because they are similar, but also because they are about as different as two films about climate change could be.

Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” is a filmed lecture aimed at the head. Gore delivers his mind-changing message himself, using every particle of his virtually-President-of-the-United-States prestige to deliver his pitch. And now this prestige is further enhanced by his Nobel Prize.

Armstrong, by contrast, stays firmly behind the scenes of her part-documentary, part-fiction film, “The Age of Stupid”. From the crowd-funding that financed the film, to the multi-threaded narrative of the film’s story, to the band of dedicated climate campaigners at NotStupid.org, Armstrong’s narrative appears as a story told by others.

Both strategies are useful and probably necessary, but of the two, I feel that Armstrong’s aimed-at-the-heart narrative is the more accessible. I am motivated and empowered to change my own everyday climate-related actions as I listen to Al Gore recite his awesome statistics in “An Inconvenient Truth”, but as I witness and identify with climate change's effects on "The Age of Stupid" characters, my emotions tell me that climate change action can’t wait. It may be inconvenient, but the time to act notstupidly is now.

Watched this movie in Beijing yesterday. Thanks BEN for organizing this event. Very encouraging! Nice works!

i live in a very rural area of France where bio is all around and rather used to very left and very green movies. I was afraid that this movie with its anglo-saxon style and more mordern approach would not really catch their attention and it did not: it blew their mind up! they all loved it and almost everyone that have missed the public screening (thanks to indie screening) wanna see it! nothing else to add, you're good and you're doing good.

emanuele