What an amazing film that was both powerful and so moving, I seemed to blubbering most of the way through. The Age of Stupid is a film about climate change, but it's not An Inconvenient Truth: Part Deux. The Inconvenient Truth was more of a "shake us" from our slumber of self-comforting denial.
The Age of Stupid has been designed to take hold of your head and smash your face repeatedly into a table until you f'ing wake up!
Do not get me wrong here folks, when I say Wake Up, I do not mean to believe this crap. There are two sides, each oposing the other. Who do we believe? The veil has been pulled over your eyes.
Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, said on Monday the leaked correspondence suggested researchers "cooked the science to make this thing look as if the science was settled, when all the time of course we knew it was not," according to a [transcript] of a [radio interview] posted on his Web site. Aides for Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican, are also looking into the disclosure.[source]
The film states that less than 1% of climate scientists believe that there is any doubt about that link (even if this number rises to 60% when the general public are asked their opinion). The debate is over at long last, so the intention of Stupid is to use human stories to illustrate what a serious pickle our species has got itself into.
Stupid is mostly a documentary following the very different lives of six individuals and families around the world. The subjects include an oil geologist who lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit, attempting to deal with the devastation of losing everything he owned to a natural disaster that was probably worsened by the burning of oil that he discovered.
Stupid is carefully produced, and created to involve the audience with on screen emotions, from sharing the heartbreak of the elderly French mountain guide witnessing a glacier recede, to the frustrated anger of the environmentalist whose wind farm had been blocked by a local NIMBY campaign.
The fabric of the documentary is made up of a series of animated facts and an innovative fictional subplot starring Pete Postlethwaite who plays the role of an archivist in 2055, responsible for curating a climate-proof store of human culture, history and scientific discovery, as well as two pickled specimens of every creature on Earth.
Stupid focuses on the idea that it was our behaviour in the years up to 2015 that caused unstoppable climate change, culminating in the near- extinction of life by the middle of the century. Your left struggling with the same question and trying to comprehend why didn't we do something to stop our own suicide. We surely could have, but more importantly, we STILL can.
For propanganda, it's brilliant as it distills every emotion so powerful. I laughed, I cried, and at one point, I got up and slammed the keyboard into the desk and walked out of the room.
The Age of Stupid isn't perfect.
What I appreciate about the movie is that if offers you a 'better viewing area' to see how real people's lives have already been touched by climate change and how our narrow focus on consumption could bring us to the bleak scenario of the Arctic archive. The film makes you realise it could happen all too easily - are we THAT stupid?
After insisting once again that there is a consensus on Man-made Global Warming, Al Gore denies, downplays and refuses to discuss the role that CEOs played in crafting his Cap-and-Trade C02 trading schemes. Al Gore met with Ken Lay, of ENRON-and top members of [Goldman Sachs] -- all of which Al Gore denies.
In point of fact, Al Gore's founding partner in the sustainability-investment firm [Generation Investment Management, LLC] is none other than David Blood, [CEO of Goldman Sachs'] asset-management division until 2003. Gore-Blood founding their Carbon-trading Corp. in 2004.[source - pdf report]
Although Gore refuses to address the issues, the facts remain that many of the people and associated firms that caused our current and widespread economic crisis are all involved in the Illusion of Global Warming in an attempt to charge tax for climate control.
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“I was absolutely blown away by your film. I thought it'd be good, but it was amazing. Heartbreakingly beautiful.”
ReplyDeleteIt looks fantastic, beautifully filmed, and it's so consumingly stimulating, with so many aspects to it, there's no way you could come out and talk about other things like you do after so many one-dimensional films.”
ReplyDeleteThanks for the movie night! I can't wait to see your next choice. I know I have something good to watch on Thursday nights.
ReplyDelete“If I were a film critic my review would be filled with words like moving, powerful, and must see! As a member of the audience I was totally engaged from beginning to end and was converted, without any preaching or lecturing, from being mildly concerned about climage change to a party bore on the urgency of the issue. I am convinced I will be the first amongst many converts and hope that this film gets the widest possible audience. Great distribution job Phoenix. When people asks the same question "what can i do?". The first thing I will be doing is telling everyone to go see "The Age of Stupid".”
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