I just watched this movie, which was Oscar nominated in the Documentary Feature category. It's interesting as recent documentaries go because it seems to resist making any kind of "point" - which I suppose could be seen as the basis of documentary film-making but to me seems more like an abdication of responsibility. There is no "outsider" point of view, after all... no Archimedean "fulcrum" point at which we can stand and see things in their entirety. If one is going to present this information, there is an inherent responsibility to also present an interpretation of it. There is no need to assert one's interpretation as the only possible or valid one, but to fail to present one at all is to leave the viewer adrift and unchanged.
And so, I was a bit disappointed. The filmmaker (Alex Gibney) seems to rely on his various clips and interviews to tell the story, which is quite well constructed and easy to follow. What is most disappointing to me, however, is that at various points in the movie, the people who have been interviewed deliver an important question that is never examined by the film itself, namely, "Was the Enron fraud and bankruptcy the result of the misdeeds of bad people, or by the corporate profit-driven culture itself?" By failing to examine the question, Gibney implies very clearly that his answer is the former.
This question is asked or implied at least three times by different figures in the movie, but is apparently dropped in favour of the choice to indict the top executives of the company. The final screens of the film show comparative numbers in terms of the monetary losses of various groups of employees and pensioners compared to the individual profits of the top executives, and one of the last spoken words is given to a reporter from Fortune magazine (Bethany McLean) who contributed to the exposure of the Enron fraud, who theorizes that it was the misguided, immoral complicity of the Enron executives, their attorneys, accountants, and bankers that led to the scandalous outcome (the accounting and law firms that served Enron were each being paid approximately $1M per week for their services).
This, then, would seem to be the thesis of the argument: that the checks and balances that are supposed to protect investors from corporate fraud failed due to the individual greed and pride of the people involved. The alternative suggestion, made by a few different figures in the movie, is not given any scrutiny.
But, when I watch the footage of former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling as he is brought to account for what happened (he resigned four months before the bankruptcy) I do not see the face of a man who was caught doing something immoral or that he knew was wrong.
Rather, it is the face of a man who is beginning to realize that the values and priorities on which he has based his life and his definitions of success are not shared by everyone who has power, and who is being asked to defend himself on the basis of an ethical system that is entirely alien to him. And it is here that I think the movie fails to look closely enough at its subject.
The values and priorities of the corporate world in which Skilling and Chairperson Ken Lay lived and breathed said that the only 'good' is to make as much profit as possible in as short a time as possible, and to keep the company's stock value rising. Anything that is done to pursue that solitary 'good' is the right thing to do. In embodying this value of corporate culture, Enron and its eventual collapse demonstrated the fundamental incorrectness of its basic philosophy.
In other words, it's not that Enron was a bad company, or that it was run by bad people. Rather, it was based on bad philosophy. The problem is that it is the philosophy on which so much of our North American culture is similarly based. The witchhunts of people like Lay, Skilling, and their CFO Andy Fastow therefore serve to shift the focus off of the cultural systems that promoted them, encouraged them, and gave them the keys to the kingdom. Did these men do illegal and immoral things? Almost certainly. But where is the community that created them and supported them? It's the entire society.
When you tell corporations that their ultimate goal is "higher profits, sooner" and then, as an afterthought, encourage them to practice sustainability, ethical bookkeeping, and honesty, you deliver a mixed message. And when the organizations that are meant to supervise and provide "checks and balances" are simply other corporations whose own goal is also "higher profits, sooner" and when the Legislators, Presidents, and Bureaucrats who administer the Government have their eyes on their own personal bottom-lines, Enron is what you get.
It wasn't bad people doing bad things. It was corporate people doing what they do, and doing it well. And this is what happened.
The documentary "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room" doesn't say any of this... at best, it hints to it. Even the title of the film reveals its perspective - this was a nickname used to refer to Lay and Skilling. The incident, in the view of Alex Gibney, boils down to these two men and their misdeeds. And that, in my view, reflects a lack of perspective, integrity, or boldness on the part of Gibney as a filmmaker. And causes me to wonder what his profit-motive is, and where he draws the bottom line.
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