Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room
With docos I am sometimes left with the feeling that as a film they would probably make a great book. You know the deal – very informative, great story behind it all, but nothing but talking heads. Visually dull. However I know so little about this particular issue: about Enron, intricate workings of big businesses, insider trading – basically anything involving corporations is just not my world - that a book filled with corporate jargon is just too daunting a prospect (and an unwanted reminder of how stupid I am) so I’m more than happy to embrace a documentary on the subject.
The two authors of the book, also called Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room, actually appear in the film adaptation giving it a much needed spine as they basically reiterate their own written words. This method is less desperate than it sounds, as one of the writers, Bethany McLean, was the journalist that first exposed Enron’s shonky workings and started the downfall. Luckily for ignorant little me, she is right when says upfront that the Enron saga is, above everything, a human story, and you don’t need a MBA to follow it or find it fascinating.
It really is amazing that the two men behind the whole Enron mess got away with this for so long, their dodgy dealings barely concealed in the red tape of big business and façade of success, making millions and millions as their shareholders and staff were left with nothing as the business spectacularly and publicly collapsed. Even scarier is that it probably happens a lot more than you would think, and that Enron – as big a company as it was – is just one example of corrupt corporate businesses around the world.
The film pieces together the whole debacle with interviews with the authors, former employees and business experts, with particularly damning footage from Enron’s own staff meetings that paints a rather pathetic picture of CEO Jeff Skilling as a geek-turned-rockstar, as the power got more and more to his head and his wallet got more and more stuffed. Don’t expect to see him get his due comeuppance though, as the film only takes you up to the start of the court case, which to my knowledge is still going on.
I’m always keen to see how documentaries that are essentially talking heads re-telling a story manage to spice things up. Enron steers well clear of dodgy re-enactments, but does fall for another dodgy doco cliché by continually using the amusingly manoeuvre of cutting to literal images of what people are talking about, a trick loved by sleazy current affairs shows – for instance: if someone mentions that the power Enron’s executives had over their staff was "like a magic trick" we will then cut to a rabbit being pulled out of a hat. Or if things for Enron "started going downhill" they will cut to roller-bladers skating down a hill or something equally naff. Lucky for them no-one says that the shonky Enron bosses can go fuck themselves, or anything of the ilk, or we would have been treated to some very interesting images indeed.