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ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM
Directed & Written by: Alex Gibney.
Produced by: Alex Gibney, Jason Kliot & Susan Motamed.
Director of Photography: Maryse Alberti.
Edited by: Alison Ellwood.
Music by: Matt Hauser.
Released by: Magnolia.
Country of Origin: USA. 110 min. Not Rated.

Founded in 1985, after the deregulation of the gas industry, the Enron Energy Corporation was at one time the seventh largest U.S. conglomerate. Before it filed for bankruptcy in 2001, company insiders sold their shares of stock before Enron's imminent collapse, which wiped out 20,000 jobs and $20 billion in pensions. Instead of being weighted down by the company's fraudulent accounting, director Alex Gibney successfully focuses on key players Jeff Skilling, Enron's former president and CEO, and his protégé and CFO, Andy Fastow. The film's hero is famed accountant turned whistleblower Sherron Watkins. Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, co-authors of the book from which this documentary was adapted, guide the viewer through the murky and complicated shell games that were created to disguise the fact that the energy supplier wasn't making but losing vast amounts of money. The film's smoking guns are audio excepts of Enron traders calling power plant operators ("Let 'em use candles") to reduce electrical power (of which there was plenty), causing the California rolling blackouts of 2001. Enron implies that this was seen as a valuable opportunity for the George W. Bush-connected and Texas-based company to bring down California's democratic governor, Gray Davis. (The film describes Davis as popular, but he was more often than not derided as a stuffed shirt and part of the party apparatus.)

Inundating the viewer with facts and figures, the details of the corruption at Enron are generalized. The outlines of the scandal are lucidly made clear. With an irony-laden narration by Peter Coyote, chapters are glibly titled after such songs as "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" and "That Old Black Magic." Before the financial fact findings become mind numbing, Gibney keeps the images flowing, even tossing in some T & A for good measure (an executive had a penchant for strippers). The director also makes effective use of Enron's own corporate videos, catching Skilling in all of his arrogant cockiness. Kent Turner
April 22, 2005