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ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM Send This Review to a Friend
No matter how appalling you think the Enron scandal has been, you may not have a handle on the hubris the inside players exhibited as the pyramid they had built began to collapse. The documentary “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” written and directed by Alex Gibney, gives us greater insight into the debacle and is entertaining at the same time. It is often downright funny, although the humor jars one’s stomach when one thinks about how many people lost their savings and pensions.
There is a certain satisfaction seeing the big shots brought to the bar of justice. Hitchcock once remarked about how the public likes to see the high and mighty in handcuffs. Old-fashioned stocks, the kind you sit in, not the kind you buy, might have provided more fun. The film, based on the book by Fortune reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, gains with the use of tapes and interviews that provide information on corporate workings and positions taken by the players and their opponents.
But Gibney provides that certain extra by use of pop music and illustrations that help make the film entertaining as well as educational. The details are strong enough in themselves, but much as Michael Moore does in his films, Gibney sees the humor as well as the tragedy in the way in which the Enron executives were able to keep the pyramid going even as all signs were pointing to an impending financial disaster.
“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” is not only good filmmaking. It is a compact course in capitalism at its worst. A Magnolia Pictures release.
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