The Enron scandal is on one level quite complicated \u2014 involving abuse of specific accounting practices and the shifting of Nigerian barges. On another, it\u2019s extremely simple: Enron executives kept reporting profits that didn\u2019t exist, and got massive bonuses for their trouble. To tell the story well, you need to work on both of these levels. It requires both a clear exposition of the many things that went wrong and a rigorous repetition of the central fact of continuous, unrepentant fraud. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gibney hits these marks neatly. Enron\u2026<\/em> is adapted from a book of the same title by reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind; both appear as talking heads. They are eloquent subjects, but Gibney doesn\u2019t lean too heavily on them. He assembles a wide swath of various financial experts to spell out the finer points of Enron\u2019s chicanery. Lucid voice-over narration, read by the actor Peter Coyote, ties the story together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It is the moral duty of documentaries about corporate malfeasance to incite outrage. Gibney manages this through a looping structure that shows Enron doing the same damn thing, over and over again. As the company hurtles to its unavoidable end, Gibney circles back to the familiar pattern: an obviously stupid or dishonest scheme (run by this guy with his dirt bikes, or this one with his strippers), predictably massive failure, inevitable bonus. Remarkably, Gibney brings the hammer down on Enron through C-SPAN coverage of Congressional hearings, tightly edited to keep the showboating down to a minimum. Through careful questioning, politicians (notably former senators Carl Levin and Barabara Boxer) nail the suits down, making them squirm as they offer mealy-mouthed denials in a public airing of their misdeeds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gibney is not as slick a stylist as the other great documentarian of our age, Errol Morris<\/a>. He\u2019s more interested in exposition, and rooting out the systems of power that govern our lives and limit the possibilities of our existence. Nevertheless, he finds images\u2014motorcyclists free-falling into canyons, bros bro-ing their way off of corporate jets, old-timey magicians pulling rabbits out of hats\u2014that propel our sense of injustice and the flippancy with which corporate America views their responsibilities. Ironic musical cues sharpen these experiences of outrage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But Gibney\u2019s primary interest (which would carry through to his Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side<\/em> and his series on Scientology) is the relationship between the individual, the group, and society. \u201cWas Enron the work of a few bad men,\u201d he asks, \u201cor the dark shadow of the American Dream?\u201d He probes the question from a variety of angles. Looking at the psyches of the head honchos, particularly founder Ken Lay and CEO Jeff Skilling, there are not great depths to mine. Both men have an absolute allergy to the notion that anyone else might make a profit from their brilliance. Skilling seems a typical nerd who lost weight and got hair plugs. A pathological performance of \u201cextreme\u201d (in a 90s sense of the term) masculinity trickled down from the top. We see endless footage of company-wide meetings where Lay and Skilling put on the razzle-dazzle about the stock price and the limitless potential of the company. It\u2019s a vibe that\u2019s been replicated in scams like WeWork and Theranos, where a corporate culture defined by winning causes a stunning lack of either morality or curiosity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s typical, when revisiting film treatments of scandals of the past, for everything to seem all too quaint in retrospect. It is a testament to both the colossal scale of the Enron fiasco, and to Gibney\u2019s talents, that Enron\u2026<\/em> feels fresh and compelling. It\u2019s a great yarn on its own terms. But its deeper questions still feel urgent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gibney hits on deregulation as the heart of the Enron story. Early on, he plays footage of one of Ronald Reagan\u2019s speeches where, with steely conviction, the former president insists, \u201cGovernment is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.\u201d Deregulation was the credo of Lay and Skilling, and what brought them close to influential politicians like the Bush family. For Enron, however, there seemed to be little difference between deregulation and outright stealing.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This raping and pillaging, which went unchallenged by the most respectable banks and accounting firms, raises questions whether there can be such a thing as ethical capitalism. Enron\u2026 <\/em>is full of convincing wonks and whistleblowers who are true believers in the principles of the system; Mark Cuban was one of the executive producers. Yet Gibney\u2019s dissection (and subsequent events) prove how many sins hide beneath the guise of the \u201cfree market.\u201d Now that a new generation of bros think that depriving citizens of basic resources as \u201cfucking cool,\u201d Gibney\u2019s warning that Enrons are the features, not the bugs, of capitalism is well worth heeding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” is streaming on Plex<\/a>, Kanopy<\/a> and Hoopla<\/a>, and available for digital rental or purchase<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/enron2-1024x768.png\")
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