The Age of Stupid (2009)

Pete Postlethwaite: The Archivist

Quotes 

• Archivist of the future : Why didn't we save ourselves when we had the chance? Is the answer: because, on some level, we weren't sure if we'd be worth saving?

• [last lines] 

  Archivist of the future : I just 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 whoever, whatever, eventually finds this recording.

• Archivist of the future : Throughout our history the deal was: We left the world a better place than we found it. That was progress. The wheel. The Rule of Law. Anything. It was our covenant with our children and grandchildren. My children weren't angry with me for breaking the covenant. They were too busy trying to stay alive to waste energy on blame, trying to negotiate their way through food riots and refugee camps and the collapse of society. But I think my grandchildren would have been angry - had they survived into adulthood.

• Archivist of the future : We could have saved ourselves, but we didn't. It's amazing. What state of mind were we in, to face extinction and simply shrug it off?

• Archivist of the future : Strange, watching these film-fragments. It's like looking through binoculars, observing people on a far-off beach running around in circles, fixated on the small area of sand under their feet - as a tsunami races towards the shore.

• Archivist of the future : We wouldn't be the first life-form to wipe itself out. But what would be unique about us is that we did it knowingly.

• [first lines] 

  Archivist of the future : Welcome to the global Ark-ive, a vast storage structure located 800 km north of Norway. It contains the artwork from every national museum. There are pickled animals, stacked up, two by two; every film, every book, every scientific report, all stored on banks of servers. But the conditions we're experiencing now were actually caused by our behavior in the period leading up to 2015. In other words: we could have saved ourselves. We could have saved ourselves, but we didn't.