2005年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-An Inside Look at Enron

时间：2007-07-17 06:16:46

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Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a new documentary written and directed by Alex Gibney. The film is based on the best selling book of the same name. Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition film critic Kenneth Turan has this review.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a horror film for adults. It's a chilling, completely fascinating documentary. That reveals a face of unregulated greed that is as terrifying as Lon Chaney's unmasking in the Phantom¹ of the Opera, maybe more so because everything here is true. What after all could be more frightening than the demise² of Enron, a financial leviathan that morphed into the largest corporate³ bankruptcy⁴ in American history.

We've very quickly determined⁵ that the insiders had sold off a billion dollars of their stock in the preceding several months.

Did you convert stocks worth 66 million dollars?
Uh, I don't know but I ...
Would that be surprising if you learn that you did that?
No, that would not be surprising.

It was a fraud of such enormous proportions that Arthur Anderson, once America's oldest accounting⁶ firm, self-protectively shredded⁷, a ton of documents dealing⁸ with the case, before going bankrupt itself. Though the Enron case has strong political implications, this particular film can't be further from the kind of rabble-rousing manifestos Michael Moore turns out. Instead, it is a meticulously⁹ detailed¹⁰ and fact-filled documentary blessed with key interviews as well as access to corporate audio and video tapes. Enron is so thorough that you can't afford to dose off as many of the country's financial institutions apparently¹¹ did, even for a minute.

Director Gibney produced the excellent blues-themed "Lightning in a Bottle" and he's done some inventive things with Enron's soundtrack. Gibney has the nerve to begin the film with H W's querulously rasping, over a shot of Houston's sleek¹² Enron tower and unexpected songs like Billy Holiday's version of "God Bless the Child" make pointed¹³ appearances. Whether Enron's eventual¹⁴ catastrophe¹⁵ was the work of a few bad apples or as the film posits¹⁶ the dark shadow of the American dream is left for the viewers to decide, but it is impossible to watch this riveting¹⁷ story without concluding that a few regulating bureaucrats¹⁸ would be a small price to pay to prevent a cataclysm¹⁹ of the magnitude of Enron's fiery²⁰ self-immolation.

Kenneth Turan is a film critic for Los Angeles Times and Morning Edition.

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2005年NPR美国国家公共电台五月-An Inside Look at Enron

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