Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room Review

Some very prominent film critics have been stating that this is not a political documentary, despite the conspiracy angle involving the rolling blackouts of California a few years ago, and the subsequent overthrow of Governor Grey Davis. Additionally, while it’s aesthetically obvious from the very small amount of screen time devoted to Lay’s connections to the Bush family that the filmmaker has little love for the current U.S. president, to call this doc “political” in nature would be inaccurate. This is not a story about Bush, Davis, Arnold Schwarzenegger, or whoever else. As it has been previously pointed out, “Enron” is ultimately about a criminal act, and the masterminds behind it. But more than that, through interviews with insiders and “survivors’, we get speculative views on how, psychologically, Lay, Skilling, and their ilk got to where they ended up. The film’s greatest strength is its unflinching examination of how subtle elements of justification and exaggeration created an unstable web of human greed that extended well beyond the shining Enron towers. Some of the world’s leading banking organizations and financial institutions were enablers in the mass deceit which, in the end, deep-sixed not only Enron itself, but the future of many unwitting employees who tragically lost their retirement savings.

Using narration provided by Peter Coyote as a linking device between newly-taped interviews, news footage, and the occasional impressionistic re-enactment (one involving strippers, shockingly enough), Gibney’s documentary always works, and is always objectively engaging, despite its nearly two-hour running time. It’s all set to an impressive array of ironically commenting pop and rock tunes, nearly all year-accurate to their placement in the story. While it would’ve been nice, if also ‘fair and balanced”, to present the perspectives of Lay and Skilling themselves alongside the many finger-pointers and analysts, it is understandable for a variety of reasons that they would not be available for such a thing. And besides, there truly is no real justification for what they did. The film effectively makes its case that these guys let their mighty reputations as corporate geniuses lead them slowly but steadily down the path to the dark side.

“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” is being touted as an important film, and perhaps it is. When it comes to broaching the overall problem of human greed and mankind’s surprising willingness to backstab one another with only the slightest of prodding, the sobering example documented here shows the personal and broad consequences of such behavior. Time and time again, the subtle lesson is to not become too taken with your own intelligence, because being one of the smartest guys in the room doesn’t amount to much when the room is a cell in the greybar hotel.

- Jim Tudor