Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

The Enron scandal had just begun to reverberate across the United States when I was in my last year of college. I was enrolled in the last general study course I needed to pull off a bachelor's degree in English Lit -- and that class happened to be Macro Economics. To cut to the chase, I barely pulled off a "C" and it was thanks, in no small part, to my complete inability to comprehend the intricate web of deceit that Enron execs had manufactured against millions of people. The story was so vast, the players so entrenched, and the numbers so steeped in high level accounting that I barely stayed afloat. To be honest, I was dreading this review of 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' because I was terrified of simply not getting it once again.

Apparently, I had a lousy professor. This well-paced documentary is less than two hours long and, by the end, I much more fully understood the daunting complexities that left me tired and out of breath throughout three long months of classes. Writer and director Alex Gibney weaves a thorough and well-structured narrative of the events leading to the collapse of one of America's most powerful corporations. Based on the best selling book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind and narrated expertly by actor Peter Coyote, the film documents the rise and fall of an expansive house of cards that changed the way we view Big Business.

The reason 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room' works so well is because it quickly takes the focus away from numbers and places it on people. Divided into easy to follow vignettes that chart both the company and its key villains, a morality tale emerges about pride and some people's all-consuming lust of money. We're introduced to the company's chairman, Ken Lay -- the most public face of the fiasco and an apparent emperor without clothes who turns a blind eye to the unethical practices of his minions. We meet Enron's CEO, Jeff Skilling -- the architect of the company's scandalous practices and an engaging and inspirational leader that could seemingly sell oxygen in a bottle. We jump to Ken Rice -- the manic depressive marketeer of madness who becomes increasingly agitated as Enron blatantly manipulates the truth to stay afloat. We're briefly confronted with Liu Pai -- the Skilling loyalist and lieutenant who cashes out of the company with a cool $250 million, a seemingly meek bulldog obsessed with strippers and crooked deals. We're thrust into the life of Andy Fastow -- the deserving scapegoat who escorted Enron from deception to outright Faustian fraud, a shrill investor who propped up stocks while stashing debt in shell companies to artificially inflate profit margins. Last but not least, we're given short glimpses of the smaller players -- the traders caught disgracefully cold and uncaring on recorded phone calls, the investors left bankrupt, the naïve workers suddenly confronted by the dark dealings of their employer and scammed of their pensions and retirement funds, and the few men and women -- particuarly the brave whistle blowing Sharon Watkins -- who helped reveal Enron as a sinkhole of massive proportion.

I found myself shocked and angry, but also oddly intrigued by this investigation of the people involved in this corporate cesspool. It was sad to see how many people genuinely believed in the validity and honesty of the company. The frightening thing about the film is the amount of Hollywood-esque sleight of hand maneuvers that occurred behind the scenes: skeptical employees were fired or shipped to Canada, traders single handedly ordered power plants in California to shut off entire city grids, and the men at the top of the hierarchy all conveniently began selling their stock before Enron fell apart. In the ironic end, Enron's slogan -- "Ask Why" -- was the last thing many people did until it was too late.

Conspiracy theorists will froth at the mouth over Enron's apparent close ties to the Bush administration, as well as suggestions that wrongdoing at the company directly led to to Gray Davis's recall as California governor (and Arnold Schwarzenegger's election in his place). Thankfully, Gibney keeps his camera recording interview after interview without pausing to offer a political commentary or an assumption based on the facts. His avoidance of Michael Moore-style leaps was refreshing and elevated the film to the level of a real documentary whose priority is to educate rather than to advocate. The absence of Gibney's voice (except for a handful of off camera questions) was a welcome lack of ego that allowed me to form my own opinions and conclusions.

There are some mild problems, but nothing terribly distracting. A few more dates (particuarly in the first half of the film) would've helped clarify the timeline, interviews with the corrupt CEOs would've been amazing (but were understandably impossible to get), the sheer amount of information bombarding my brain was almost too much to handle at times (I backtracked three separate times to re-listen to explanations of finer points), and some of the stock footage is warped to maintain the film's widescreen presentation. However, all of these issues are standard to solid documentaries and barely register here.

All in all, this is a fascinating look at the largest known corporate con in American history and I wholeheartedly recommend it to students of history, economics, and politics alike. Even if you're a casual moviegoer, your time will be well spent with this measured but savage exploration of Enron's toppled ivory tower.