Franny Armstrong is a film maker who believes in social change. She believes it comes as much from people as from governments. Her last documentary, McLibel (2005), saluted two intrepid environmentalists who successfully took on the might of fast-food giant McDonalds.
Her latest call to arms is called The Age of Stupid. Beginning in 2055, when London is under water, Vegas under sand, Sydney on fire and the Taj Mahal in ruins, it features Pete Postlethwaite as The Archivist, a sad-eyed man, the last one left on earth, who lives in a tower off Norway using touch-screen technology to find out why it was that people in 2009 did nothing to stop the eco-catastrophe that was staring them in the face.
There are six main stories. Among them that of an octogenarian French mountain guide who has witnessed the swift erosion of the glacier he loves; an Indian entrepreneur bent on setting up a low-budget airline; a British wind-energy developer who tries to persuade other people in his village to support the construction of local turbines.
Armstrong is an astute journalist, travelling the world to track down both people and communities that can illuminate her central question: how can consumerism and all the social and psychological destabilisation that it produces be controlled?
The impact of this more-is-better philosophy isn't in any doubt. The US Energy Secretary is shown stating that the fact of climate change is no longer up for debate. Armstrong alights on extraordinary details (the construction of ski slopes in Dubai) and produces horrific statistics (a power station is built in China every four days to feed the energy demands of the West).
The Age of Stupid is more passionate, more emotionally charged than the Al Gore-fronted An Inconvenient Truth (2006). It makes energetic use of animation in the style of 1970s public information films. Its use of science fiction is also both effective and emotional: it's as if Armstrong hopes that the future can come to the aid of the present. Bold, supremely provocative, and hugely important, her film is a cry from the heart as much as a roar for necessary change.
Telegraph rating: * * * *
