Inside Job
Charles Ferguson's Inside Job, which screened early this afternoon, is a highly absorbing, meticulously composed hammer doc about the causes of the '08 financial meltdown. Most of us have some kind of understanding of the whys and wherefores, but Ferguson lays it all out like a first-class table setting and makes this titanic crime seem extra vivid.
The American public was robbed blind and is still being made to suffer by an arrogant den of thieves, and the enormity of their power-corridor hustle is almost too vast and labrynthian to comprehend. But Ferguson's doc makes it more comprehensible than in any presentation I've seen thus far. And yet as sharp and hard-bullet as it is, Inside Job doesn't provide any release or crescendo. How could it? The bad guys are still running the show, etc. It mainly made me grind my teeth.
Every Average Joe and tea-bagger needs to see this film at least twice and take notes each time. (Or at least read the press notes.) Will they? Of course not. Inside Job will only play to the educated liberal urbans -- the only social class that's even half-inclined to spend ticket money on documentaries.
Inside Job is brilliant, perceptive, very well organized, necessarily angry or at least confrontational, and narrated by Matt Damon. And great looking -- the gleaming, superbly lighted, crystal-clear lensing by Kalyanee Mann and HE pally Svetlana Cvetko is easily the most handsome and lustrous I've seen at the festival so far.
The problem is that none of Inside Job feels especially jolting. It is basically content to "get it right" and "tell it better," which is more than enough for me. But will that be enough for at the attention deficit disorder crowd?
It delivers, in any event, a clear, razor-sharp portrait of a gang of blue-chip ogres and world-class motherfuckers (Summers, Paulson, Greenspan, Geitner, etc.), starting with their initial unleashing during the Reagan-era deregulating and moving through a litany of Bush 41, Clinton and Bush 43 sign-offs, conflict-of-interest corruptions, revolving-door deals and mutually beneficial handjobs.
Too many billions were available, they all got greedy and created games and schemes in order to line their pockets, and here we are. And Barack Obama hasn't done jack about restraining this culture since taking office.
But unlike No End in Sight's bracing explanations of American cockups in Iraq, there's not much in Inside job that feels especially new or surprising. It's really quite wonderful how it explains the most destructive mass robbery in history in such a clean and concise fashion. But I fear that it's arrived too late. If it had been shown at last year's Cannes festival, or even at last September's Toronto festival, it obviously would have felt more vital or timely. And yet it's very, very good for what it is.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells on May 15, 2010 at 8:13 AM
comment #1
crazynine
says ...
Who plays Barney Frank and Chris Dodd?
Posted by crazynine
at May 15, 2010 10:07 AM
comment #2
Brendan
says ...
Just finished "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis and even though it was a fascinating read, the facts behind how Wall Street fleeced the Global Economy made me want to vomit. And as Jeff points out, Barry has been asleep at the wheel and the next bubble has already been inflated and another crash is on the horizon.
Jeff - How does Inside Job compare with Collapse?
Posted by Brendan
at May 15, 2010 10:24 AM
comment #3
moviesquad
says ...
Obama could've flushed the system by not propping up the banks during the downturn and letting them fold, but he chose not to. No, we can't suffer a single bad week in this economy because the electorate will get pissed at their reps so we've got to keep the balls in the air no matter how corrupt and infested the system is.
Instead, he's double-downed, and everyone is back to their old shenanigans. Congress, Democrats and Republicans, are just as much at fault as everyone else in this game. Now, they're busy with a policy of bread and circuses by orchestrating worthless show trials and low impact "financial regulation" bills to try to prove like they're doing something, even though it all amounts to nothing.
Why does it matter if this doc would only appeal to educated liberals? They've already put their guys in power and it hasn't made a smidgen of difference. Neither party is ever going to fix this mess. It's must blow up in an unrepairable way before anything is done about it.
Posted by moviesquad
at May 15, 2010 10:32 AM
comment #4
Jeffrey Wells
says ...
Collapse felt 100% fresh and startling when I saw it last September. Plus it's a little bit creepier and more unnerving than Inside Job, if only because we've seen many news reports about caused the Big Meltdown.
Posted by Jeffrey Wells
at May 15, 2010 10:34 AM
comment #5
CitizenKanedforChewingGum
says ...
"Of course not. Inside Job will only play to the educated liberal urbans -- the only social class that's even half-inclined to spend ticket money on documentaries."
Not to mention the fact that 95% of the time, documentaries like this only ever play in urban areas. Don't blame Average Joes on this one...on the few occasions that there are documentaries that actually get released wide, people generally will give it a shot (i.e. Inconvenient Truth, March of the Penguins,, anything by Michael Moore, etc.).
Posted by CitizenKanedforChewingGum
at May 15, 2010 12:32 PM
comment #6
Ray DeRousse
says ...
Why would Obama restrain these guys? He helped SELL the bailout!
No matter how concisely any documentary lays out this crime, the American people are too fat, lazy, stupid, and gutless to actually stand up against it. And so it ends up as a lot of whining and no change.
Posted by Ray DeRousse
at May 15, 2010 1:05 PM
comment #7
SpinDozer
says ...
Obama could've flushed the system by not propping up the banks during the downturn and letting them fold, but he chose not to.
Yeah, right. Everyone's sooo understanding about 9.8% unemployment, if Obama had flushed the system, it would probably be 19.8% best case scenario, the teabaggers would actually have people with functioning cerebellums in their ranks.
Posted by SpinDozer
at May 15, 2010 4:06 PM
comment #8
moviesquad
says ...
SpinDozer, that was exactly my point. I said he could've done it but chose not to since the electorate wouldn't stand for it. If we really wanted to reform the system, we should've allowed the failure to happen and dethroned the kings.
Yes, it would've required more pain now, but it would lead to a stronger system later instead of a complete collapse which is probably where we are headed.
Posted by moviesquad
at May 15, 2010 4:36 PM
comment #9
SpinDozer
says ...
mmm, the nuclear option, eh? Blow it up and start over. Sounds more like a recipe to get rid of the Romanovs/Weimar CF's and exchange for something "better" to me. I could be wrong...
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, but I don't know that I could blame Bush deux or Obama for not allowing the financial system to collapse. Not too sure Obama has the muscle to get congress to address the issue with even the same level of competance as Health Care, even if he wanted to.
Posted by SpinDozer
at May 15, 2010 5:14 PM
comment #10
DocZoidberg
says ...
CitizenKanedForChewingGum sums it up pretty well....
I live in a hellish small Midwestern town, and genuinely interesting films rarely play here. I must wait for the Netflix to carry them.
Posted by DocZoidberg
at May 15, 2010 7:26 PM
comment #11
DeeZee
says ...
The problem isn't that we bailed out the banks. The problem is that we were lied to, and told that they could take care of themselves without us having to get to the point where we bailed them out.
Posted by DeeZee
at May 15, 2010 10:26 PM
comment #12
SpinDozer
says ...
The problem is that we were lied to, and told that they could take care of themselves without us having to get to the point where we bailed them out.
We bailed them out like we bailed out the S&L screw up, could've been much, much larger.
Posted by SpinDozer
at May 15, 2010 10:45 PM
comment #13
DeeZee
says ...
Um, the fact that Greece's well-being or lack thereof impacts us, too, I think it already is larger.
Posted by DeeZee
at May 16, 2010 1:35 AM
comment #14
SpinDozer
says ...
Note to DeeZeee: We did not bail out Greece.
Posted by SpinDozer
at May 16, 2010 7:47 AM
comment #15
DeeZee
says ...
I didn't say we did. I'm saying their instability is detrimental to our stability.
Posted by DeeZee
at May 16, 2010 12:49 PM
comment #16
p90x
says ...
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Posted by p90x
at May 26, 2010 12:18 AM
comment #17
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at June 8, 2010 7:41 PM