'Age of Stupid' film review

     The movie starts by hurling from bigbang to 2055 at light speed, only to find the debacle of human being by seeing the dystopian image of drowned London, buried Las Vegas, and burning Sydney. Why did the collapse of human civilization, which once ruled the whole planet, happen? The clue to the question is given by the Archivist (Peter Postlethwaite), who shows to us the lives of six people from the early 2000s, the era he calls as ‘The Age of Stupid’.

     Piers Guy, a wind farm supporter and a wind turbine developer, tried to develop a wind farm in central England, but faced severe opposition from the neighbors. Eventually, he failed to persuade the neighbors, as they were so opposed of building a wind farm near their town just because it would harm the aesthetics of their views. Even though they were cognizant of the importance of wind farm for saving the environment, they just didn’t want to change their conventional and comfortable way of living and overcome their NIMBY mentality. Human instinct definitely seeks not for any loss but for profit, which becomes an obstacle in other situations, especially when it is related to saving the environment. It is an evident truth that we must overcome this in order to save ourselves.

     The development of human civilization is also causing an extreme amount of harm to the environment. ‘The big problem is flying. Just one return flight, say London to New York, would blow our entire carbon-budget for about three and a half years.’, said Lisa Guy. Apparently, apart from ‘crimes’ such as dumping oils to the river and setting the forest on fire, flying is one of the most disastrous thing an individual can do to the environment. However, most individuals are not aware of this. Who of us would have thought that we were doing one of the worst thing we could do to the environment when we were on an airplane? This film shows that the advanced human civilization, along with the ‘stupidity’ of human race, may make it harder for us to protect the environment. Of course, scientific development may act as an effective way to soothe the environmental problems. Scientific technology can be used in various situations, such as developing ecofriendly energy, and capturing CO2 gas. Thus, we will need to have an insight about the consequences that would occur from every footstep that we make.

 

     The film tries to make a pathos appeal in order to bring sympathy to people’s mind. Fernand Pareau, who has experienced the climatic change and its effect on Mont Blanc for the last 50 years, explains to the Guy family that the glacier had melted by 7 to 10 meters in that year while taking them on a tour. Nevertheless, it is quite evident that the environment is now starting to get out of control. Such evidence can be found in current natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina, which was a disastrous hurricane that struck regions including New Orleans. Natural disasters nowadays are becoming stronger. According to a report by Oxfam, the rate of natural disasters has risen by 400 percent in the last two decades. It also concluded that the rise of the number of natural disasters was mainly due to the effect of global warming

     As the archivist ends his recording, he says ‘I find it surprising, that after so much effort the final act of our existence should be suicide. So why build this archive? It's a cautionary tale. Not for us. It's too late for us. But for, well, for whomever, whatever eventually finds this recording.’ The archivist is from a fictional future, a future that we might have to face. The archivist has made this record for us living in ‘The Age of Stupid’, facing the same situation that the archivist would have faced before the end of his factional world. In the film, we saw not only the selfish and ignorant attitudes of people, but also the ones who changed. The people from Chamonix made a protest in order to stop the tunnel from being widened. The Guy family changed their way of living in order to reduce the amount of CO2 they emit. Having watched this film, we must not be stupid anymore. We should not only be cognizant of the danger we are facing but also the importance of the changes we have to make. As the aphorism ‘Little drops fill the mighty sea’ tells us, every change we make will come into a big change that might save both the environment and ourselves.

As I was resesarching, I found a video you might like.

Speech script

Have you ever done something that failed you, both physically and mentally? Well, I have. I’ve done something that harmed both my health and hope, hope I had as a pure youngster full of passion and expectations.

A few days after the summer of 2006 faded away, I was told that my aunt had invited my family to Japan for a trip, which made me feek excited as I was fond of Japanese culture. For instance, my favorite animation characters were from Japan. Plus, many kinds of food that I loved originated from that country. These were enough to make a nine years old like me full of passion.

So, from the day following the announcement, I started preparing for my trip. I was so passionate that I even tried to learn Japanese by looking up words with my dictionary. Sadly, my language learning strategy was extremely ineffective, so all I actually learned after a few days were the most basic expressions like ‘Nan-da-yo’, ‘So-deskka’ and ‘Arigato’, which are still the only expressions I know. Even though this was the reality, I was really looking forward to my trip which was then only about two weeks left.

Time flew until the mid-term test, and there were only about three days left before I could sense it. I remember having spent the remaining days very cheerful and carefree, which is probably why I didn’t care about the due date of the milk I had with the cereal the day before the trip. Unfortunately enough, I already devoured two bowls of cereal when my mother started scolding me for drinking something that should have been thrown away at least one and a half weeks ago. I was able to assuage her by saying that everything would be fine, as the milk was in the fridge.

If everything was okay, however, I wouldn’t even be saying these things here right now. From the very next day, when my family arrived in Tokyo, I started to suffer from food poisoning. It was three hours after the arrival in Japan when the pain struck me. Imagine…I was just an innocent, pure child who was nine years old, crying and screaming, feeling as if every part of my organs were being torn apart. My body temperature peaked 39.0 degrees Celsius. The situation got worse as time passed, and we eventually had to call the emergency.

After I arrived at the hospital, I had to get the IV injection, and as I expected, I found out that my body was not in a good condition. I remember being told that the number of white blood cells in my body had risen by more than six times than usual. The doctors told me to get enough rest, and not to eat any kind of food that might stimulate my organs. Thanks to that advice, my family’s schedule for the trip in Japan was immediately canceled. Instead, we had to spend the week in my aunt’s house, constantly checking the state of my body. I was totally depressed about this because I had high expectations about this trip. I even prepared a list of 20 things I wanted to do in Japan, but only one of them was accomplished. Arriving safely in Japan. I couldn’t even grasp a chance to fulfill the other wishes. I was mentally broken, and it took me quite a long time to relieve the shock I got from it.

From this, I learned a lesson that I should be cautious about everything that I do. Everything I do, not only in important moments, but also in daily life. I have learned so thoroughly from this experience that one tiny mistake, such as ignoring the due date, can result in a disastrous consequence. We experience this kind of things a lot in our lives. We make mistakes when having conversation, taking tests, and keeping promises. These mistakes can be reduced if we just care a bit more. Keep in mind that the most disastrous incidents usually do not happen because of the biggest mistakes, but because of the small or normal mistakes that occurred just because we didn’t care. So, be cautious. Think about the consequences before you unconsciously do something. Even though this might make our lives a bit complicated and noisy, it would someday help us thoroughly.