Nest Eggs in the Blender: The Enron Movie
Unless you've already read The Smartest Guys in the Room -- the book on which the film is based -- the new Enron documentary will astound and provoke you. Brilliantly executed on a thematic as well as an aesthetic level, the film throws a halogen light on corporate America's nefarious twin without tossing the viewer into a pedantic undercurrent. Greed is good - but only to a certain extent. This movie is about those thresholds that shouldn't be traversed.In fact, The Smartest Guys in the Room lets us draw our own opinions. But there are lessons I think the film wants us to walk away with, including -- questions about bloated executive compensation, the Bush administration (close ties between Lay and Papa Bush), baby boomer's obliviousness to their personal finances, and human pride. Speaking of pride - it would seem to this viewer that the filmmakers envision CEO Ken Lay, Andrew Fastow, and Jeff Skilling as Greek heros drowning in their own hubris. You can't wait to see these guys thrown in the slammer, but when you do, you're left feeling guilty and morose. The American myth isn't suppose to conclude like this. High paid execs treating employee 401(k)'s like dynamite? C'mon.
At the end of this powerful film, I said to myself the same thing my mother told me growing up -- don't lie because you'll have to lie again in order to cover the first one. Mendacity, self-perpetuating in nature, is a ticking time bomb. I won't say more because I think anyone interested in modern mythology Americana should see this movie. It is less episodic ("Oh, I already know about the Enron saga" one friend said)-- than it is archetypal a study, a morality tale served with panache. Smartest Guys is showing at the Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street
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