The Age of Stupid - review

Director Franny Armstrong has carved a niche in hard-hitting David vs Goliath documentaries, most notably with McLibel, the story of Britain's longest ever legal case. Here, in The Age of Stupid, she chooses an even bigger target for reproach; the human race.

Teaming up with Oscar winning producer John Battsek (One Day in September), Armstrong collages seven gripping stories, any one of which would have been enough to sustain a watchable movie. Epic in scope and ambition, The Age of Stupid compartmentalises the recent history of human folly. Our mistakes are depicted with painstaking detail, clear and precise, so that there is no room for argument. But despite delving into the individual issues, the overall theme remains intact throughout.

Knowing all the facts, why do we continue to do this to ourselves? This is the question explicitly posed throughout by 'the archivist', a miserably contrite Pete Postlethwaite, looking back on our destruction from 2055. His role is one of several entertaining devices that helps to elevate the film above a prosaic documentary style. Trapped in the global archive, a post-apocalyptic tower in the Antarctic containing all of man's achievements, he looks back on mankind's last chance.

Inside the global archive

This is a film shot through with sardonic anger, but never despairingly so. For all the depictions of a world lurching from crisis to apocalypse, there is always a sense of hope. It works as an incitement to action. At one point a British scientist spells out the razor thin margins we are working with: "Probably the biggest challenge we've ever faced," he smiles, "but we've pulled off plenty of unbelievable achievements in the past." This is a view echoed by the director: "Realistically, it doesn't look like we can turn this round. But if we don't, we're all dead, so it's quite a good reason to try!"

Director Franny Armstrong filming in New Orleans

The film opens with a sequence of genuine news reports building to the present day, showing the harm climate change has already done. Hurricane Katrina, floods in Mumbai and expanding deserts are shown in context as gathering storm clouds. Shown in this way, the signs seem impossible to ignore, but serve only to highlight our wilful ignorance.

Armstrong's skills of negotiation are clearly pretty good. In addition to gaining unlimited access to the news archives of the BBC, ITV and Sky, she managed to finance the film through selling shares to interested benefactors. "The main reason was to keep editorial control, as well as a support network of people willing us to succeed," she explains. This method, known as crowd-funding, also ensures personal control of distribution, enabling Armstrong to screen the film as part of the next UN summit on climate change. It is hard to believe that even the world's most hard-headed diplomats could be completely unmoved.

Oil fires in Nigeria

The issues are never over-simplified. Individual human concerns are never made to seem trivial. Why would residents of a quiet village in Bedfordshire want a noisy, ugly field full of wind turbines? Why would a young Indian entrepreneur abandon his dream of making low cost flights a reality for his country's poor? By rooting the problems in normal, even admirable human lives, Armstrong makes it impossible for viewers to separate themselves from the crime. She avoids 'save the whale' polemics and simply presents a bankrupt ideology that we are all complicit in.

The ever-shrinking Alps

Perhaps the most remarkable achievement is in making such bleak subject matter entertaining and often funny. Dark passages of history such as the oil wars and the rise of colonialism are ingeniously condensed into animation, with dancing murderers and musical exploitation. The point is that every aspect of our consumerist culture is responsible for today's problems, which don't begin and end with climate change.

By drawing links between stories in the UK, France, Jordan, India, New Orleans and Nigeria, Armstrong shows how poverty, disease, war and exploitation are all a consequence of the wider issue. The oil companies are cast as the main criminals, responsible for wholesale robbery and murder across the developing world. The film does not flinch from showing the scale of their influence, showing half of the Whitehouse to be on their payroll. No stone is left unturned in tracing the route to our destruction.

Pete Postlethwaite as the 'archivist', the films only fictional character

This is a film capable of challenging the most serene attitudes. By maintaining an even tone as she shows the world burning, Armstrong reflects a mentality that still prevails and probably always will. Detailing the solutions as well as the problems is not enough, because the vast majority of us still don't care.