Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
1.5/5 stars
This documentary charts the path of Enron from conception to its downfall in 2001. I was lost for the first 15-20 minutes of this documentary. Granted, I don’t know much financial jargon, and don’t have much clue when it comes to financial matters and institutions, but then this film is not geared toward those already sophisticated in these matters. I sort of followed the goings-on after that, but in talking with Andrew afterwords, found that the film didn’t really highlight some of the most egregious things done by Enron. In addition, they misrepresented the weather-options that Enron had started to get into (the way it was portrayed in the documentary was that Enron was going to either control the weather or “trade” weather among regions).
Stylistically, I was bothered that every single interview was set up so that the camera cut off the subject at the forehead. Every last one of them. And, for some reason, 99% of the zooms on a photograph also cut the subject off at the forehead. Why? What purpose did that serve? One purpose was to bug me…
Can’t say I recommend this one — the information is likely better obtained through a book.