I went to see Enron: The smartest Guys in the Room last week. Its a pretty slick documentary about the disasterous collapse of corporate giant Enron.

They do some pretty shoddy and morally repugnant things before finally declaring bankruptcy. Like generating California’s energy crisis to push up their share price, and electing The Governator. News clips from the time show just how manipulative the media was willing to be. And just how much government was willing to roll over (cut to: a confused californian energy employee saying “it just doesn’t make sense, the numbers just don’t add up”).

The film is diven forward by the testimonies of the people who were there - the journo who broke the enron story; the whistleblower who ratted out the very dodgy accounting; traders who tell us that they would stomp on your neck to increase their bonus; and one of the executives who was really high up enough to have known better. At the end of all this very heartfelt contrition and confused confession, I felt hollow. The Enron story simply exposes the giant confidence scam that is global capital, and while its interesting to watch it crumble from within, no larger lessons are drawn by the film makers. Who really cares whether the directors got $200 million or $201 million - its so much money that it loses all meaning. Only some attention is paid to the ordinary workers who’s $30 000 pension fund was frozen when it had declined to a balance of $12. It was frozen to enable those directors to scrape just that little bit more from the ordinary investors. It might be pathetic, but that’s capital.

Overall, this is a tops film, though it will culture-shock some Australians. There were lots of moments when I found myself wondering whether the people on the screen were really saying what it was that I was hearing (”The Enron collapse is like Body Heat where Enron is Kathleen Turner, and the investors are John Hurt”!!) Its very entertaining, and an insight into the games people play with your life.