Reviewed - Enron: The smartest guys in the room: THIS splendid documentary on the fall of Enron arrives here a year after its American release. An unanticipated benefit has resulted from this delay: we now know how the story ends.
Since the picture's debut, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron officials most associated with the Texan company's spectacular demise, have been convicted on the most serious of fraud charges. Any decent person watching the mischievously titled Smartest Guys in the Room will be warmed by the notion that these arrogant, smug robber barons will be passing their time sewing mailbags and pressing number plates (or whatever prisoners do these days).
Put simply, the men who controlled Enron, which began as a natural gas supplier before going on to trade in imaginary vapours, ran their company like a monumental pyramid-selling scheme. Lay, Skilling and their associates, whose self-effacing humility recalls that of the average WWF wrestler, juggled funds around satellite companies to conceal capital shortfalls. The energy crisis in California was manipulated to maximise Enron's revenue from the trading of electricity. Other Machiavellian transactions, too complicated for economic dunderheads such as this writer to fully grasp, were, it seems, more dubious still.
Eventually, one young reporter, Bethany McLean of Fortune magazine, decided to take a glance behind the Wizard's curtain. When, in 2001, she dared to ask if Enron was overvalued, she was treated with near psychotic disdain by Skilling. Who's laughing now, Jeffrey?
The story plays as a searing critique of modern capitalism. An entity that didn't really do anything, run by people with no moral compass, went on to become the seventh biggest company in the United States. It sucked up the savings of countless citizens and left them with next to nothing.
Unlike shriller, less measured political documentaries such as Wal- Mart: The High Price of Low Cost or those by Michael Moore, The Smartest Guys in the Room throws no aggressive rhetoric at us. Nor does it deal in wild suppositions. The picture, narrated dryly by Peter Coyote, allows this dark morality tale to emerge organically from fascinating archive footage and incisive interviews.
Towards the close, as the company sinks into debt, we find Ken Lay addressing an audience of stockholders. After reassuring them that all is well, he turns to a series of written questions handed up by the spectators. "Are you on crack?" the first one reads.
He wasn't then. But he might very well be now.
