Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: B Documentary: A
Those who come out and criticize deregulation never
explain why there was regulation to begin with. For one thing, as corporations became larger, checks and balances
had to be put in place to make certain nothing disastrous happened. The Great Depression going back in 1929 is
an impetus for this, as The United States stumbled into the Industrial Age with
the freedom of the 1920s followed by a very dark period only challenged by the
darkness that was World War II. When
there was innovation, sometimes it came from big companies and other times,
smaller ones. By the 1970s, new ideas
of macromanagement had arrived and the social revolution of the 1960s led to another
open period like the 1970s. When the
1980s wanted to end that, those intending to roll back the clock had to undo
those checks and balances. Enron:
The Smartest Guys In The Room (2005) is a tale of the worse thing that has
happened so far from these actions.
It is the tale of a culture of cutthroat capitalism by any
means necessary versus the better-regulated (if still rough) capitalism of the
pre-1980s. Between many mergermania
periods where massive wealth came into the hands of fewer and fewer people, a
combination of driving some companies out of business that could not be (or may
have been conceived as not worth buying) went hand in hand with what could or
should be purchased. In other cases,
many family mom and pop operations just called it quits, as new generations
with money from those companies (and legacies) no longer were interested in
being involved. Enron was an energy
company that was started from scratch to take advantage of the deregulation with
no ties to the past, at least until later, when they would buy a company here
or there to legitimize the dark truth of what was not happening at the company.
Created in the mid-1980s, it became one of the biggest
publicly held companies of all time and set new standards for inflating a stock
share value at all costs, but in ways that would not have been tolerated as
much even seven to ten years prior to their advent. They would just keep coming up with crazy ideas perpetrated by a
culture that exploited the enthusiasm of employees and stockholders that you
were a huge winner by just being a participant. Director Alex Gibney (see The Trials Of Henry Kissinger
elsewhere on this site, which he wrote and produced) combines any such footage
he could get of corporate propaganda with amazing amounts of interviews,
shareholder meetings, text, awards, hype and other now-ironic items that were
ahead of their time in taking advantage of the enthusiasm and implied trust
millions had in American Capitalism, only to see the company collapse.
The story is so ugly and unprecedented in the self-denial
of so many and outright deceit of key players that it is really incredible
something physically violent and even fatal has not broken out between the
persons most closely involved, namely those who got cheated out of billions of
dollars versus those who stole them. We
see footage where some of those who “know something” try to claim that the
money and wealth built up is “all gone” as if people who suffered are supposed
to believe that and go away and die with that misery as if it were the
truth. Then there are those who keep
lying and say the collapse just “happened” as if nothing can be done about it
and how it is just “unfortunate” it did happen, as if the company was honest
and true blue 100% of the time. This is
to keep a sick lie alive so those who had their hearts and hoped on the company
will keep living the lie that they almost had it all when they absolutely did
not.
Without being preachy, heavy-handed or taking sides,
something those who are furious with former Enron executives will not be happy
about, the documentary shows otherwise just how much betrayal was going
on. It shows how the company had not
been making money for years, but conned (or in a few cases, bought off) the
entire economic establishment with arrogance and fake paper profits to keep
over- inflating what was a worthless company and venture with no soul. Every industry they entered to “innovate”
with “new ideas” about making money in various energy fields that they were
destroying the integrity and darkly manipulating instead. This includes the truth about the rolling
blackouts in California, which the film addresses in particular detail.
The film is also wise to go out of its way to be detailed
in every aspect, interview as many people as possible, dig up as much audio and
video footage as possible (including plenty that was meant to be destroyed and
lost forever) and try to point out that this is only maybe the beginning of
something worse. That Enron will not be
the last Enron, but another scandal like BCCI, The Savings & Loan guttings
or Pension Gate in which generations of hard earned wealth are being hoarded by
a combination of old elitists and aggressive newcomers willing to join them to
become instantly rich as long as they tow a party line, betray history, other
people, the public trust, The United States and hope their powerful friends
will make their punishments next to nothing as long as they ruin the progress
of The New Deal, The Great Society, the community, opportunity, innovation,
economic progress from Civil Rights, progress of consumer rights and anything
else to bring things down for a quick buck as if that was all that
mattered. But it is not, because this
is about power and politics in a way the film does not begin to address
directly. By default however, it speaks
volumes about how this country went wrong in the face of Neo-Conservatism and
how the worse implications and results of it have just begun.
The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1/16 X 9 image
originated in digital High Definition, but the footage used is various and that
includes plenty of analog NTSC video, which is often degraded or stylized to
make a point of things getting worse.
Gibney is a bit more impressed by HD that he should be, as seen by one too
many holding shots, confirmed by his commentary comments. He sees HD as if he had never seen a good
film, print before, much like those who jump from VHS and Beta to better DVDs
without having seen better analog playback, better 12” LaserDisc transfers or
early HD and think video is as good as film.
Still, the shooting and editing of Enron and its headquarter buildings
as an amusement park construction made to fool the world is very clear. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is not awful, but
so much of the material is simple stereo or monophonic that it can only offer
so much, with surrounds often used only for well-chosen hit songs. The combination is engaging enough, though
we have seen some recent documentaries that have technically performed better
in either or both respects.
Extras includes trailers for this and other HDNet
features, a solid full-length feature audio commentary by Gibney, a
14-minutes-long featurette on the making of, a nearly three minutes where are
they now (updated constantly at www.chron.com/enron
and an additional section of site to visit elsewhere in the extras with a plug
for the book and soundtrack companions to this documentary), deleted/extended
scenes, separate conversations with journalist Bethany McLean (7:33) &
Peter Elkind (5:03), the installment from HDNet’s Higher Definition
series showing this off, comedy troop Firesign Theatre’s great take on the fall
of the company for radio is only 3:10 but up to their usual high standards, Gibney
reading the skits (4:26) within the corporate propaganda the company used as
distraction, a gallery of political cartoons sending up Enron and three
articles from Fortune Magazine you can read the text of frame by frame.
For a single DVD, this is one of the most loaded for any
feature we have seen to date and is the epitome of excellence on how to do
so. That is no surprise considering
what is here to back up. Without a
doubt, even with Expo and Murderball in mind, Enron: The
Smartest Guys In The Room is the best documentary of 2005 and one that will
just become more important and more important as things get worse. If there ever was a must-see DVD, this is
it.
- Nicholas Sheffo
