You should see this movie/documentary
[{"sender": null, "recipients": ["jeeproject@yahoo.com"], "timestamp": "2/6/2011 8:26:59 AM", "subject": "You should see this movie/documentary", "body": "You should see this movie/documentary \nInside Job (2010) \nNYT Critics' PickThis movie has been designated a Critic's Pick by the film reviewers of The New York \nTimes. \nSony Pictures Classics \nHenry Paulson, Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner in the documentary \"Inside Job.\" \nWho Maimed the Economy, and How \nBy A. 0. SCOTT \n\"Inside Job,\" a sleek, briskly paced film whose title suggests a heist movie, is the story of a crime \nwithout punishment, of an outrage that has so far largely escaped legal sanction and societal stigma. The \nbetrayal of public trust and collective values that Mr. Ferguson chronicles was far more brazen and \ndamaging than the adultery in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, which treated Hester more as scapegoat than \nvillain. \nThe gist of this movie, which begins in a mood of calm reflection and grows angrier and more incredulous \nas it goes on, is unmistakably punitive. The density of information and the complexity of the subject \nmatter make \"Inside Job\" feel like a classroom lecture at times, but by the end Mr. Ferguson has summoned \nthe scourging moral force of a pulpit-shaking sermon. That he delivers it with rigor, restraint and good \nhumor makes his case all the more devastating. \nHe is hardly alone in making it. Numerous journalists have published books and articles retracing the \npaths that led the world economy to the precipice two years ago. The deregulation of the financial \nservices industry in the 1980s and '90s; the growing popularity of complex and risky derivatives; the \nreal estate bubble and the explosion of subprime lending — none of these developments were exactly \nsecret. On the contrary, they were celebrated as vindications of the power and wisdom of markets. \nAccordingly, Mr. Ferguson recycles choice moments of triumphalism, courtesy of Lawrence H. Summers, \nGeorge W. Bush, Alan Greenspan and various cable television ranters and squawkers. \nEven as stock indexes soared and profits swelled, there were always at least a few investors, economists \nand government officials who warned that the frenzied speculation was leading to the abyss. Some of these \nprophets without honor show up in front of Mr. Ferguson's camera, less to gloat than to present, once \nagain, the analyses that were dismissed and ignored by their peers for so long. \nDozens of interviews — along with news clips and arresting aerial shots of New York, Iceland and other \ndisaster areas — are folded into a clear and absorbing history, narrated by Matt Damon. The music (an \nopening song, \"Big Time,\" by Peter Gabriel, and a score by Alex Heffes) and the clean wide-screen \ncinematography provide an aesthetic polish that is welcome for its own sake and also important to the \nmovie's themes. The handsomely lighted and appointed interiors convey a sense of the rarefied, privileged \nworlds in which the Wall Street operators and their political enablers flourished, and the elegance of \nthe presentation also subliminally bolsters the film's authority. This is not a piece of ragged \nmuckraking or breathless advocacy. It rests its outrage on reason, research and careful argument. \nThe same was true of Mr. Ferguson's previous documentary, \"No End in Sight,\" which focused on \ncatastrophic policies carried out in Iraq by President George W. Bush's administration just after the \noverthrow of Saddam Hussein. But whereas that film concentrated on a narrow view of a complex subject — \nthe conduct of the war rather than the at least equally controversial rationale for fighting it — \"Inside \nJob\" offers a sweeping synthesis, going as far back as the Reagan administration and as far afield as \nIceland in its anatomy of the financial crisis. \nPerhaps unsurprisingly, many of the highest-profile players declined to be interviewed. Mr. Summers \nappears only in news footage, and none of his predecessors or successors as Treasury secretary — not \nRobert E. Rubin or Henry M. Paulson Jr. or Timothy F. Geithner — submit to Mr. Ferguson's questions. Nor \ndo any of the top executives at Goldman Sachs or the other big banks. Most of the interviewees are, at \nleast from the perspective of the filmmaker, friendly witnesses, adding fuel to the director's \ncomprehensive critique of the way business has been done in the United States and the other advanced \ncapitalist countries for the past two decades. \nBoth American political parties are indicted; \"Inside Job\" is not simply another belated settling of \naccounts with Mr. Bush and his advisers, though they are hardly ignored. The scaling back of government \noversight and the weakening of checks on speculative activity by banks began under Reagan and continued \nduring the Clinton administration. And with each administration the market in derivatives expanded, and \nalarms about the dangers of this type of investment were ignored. Raghuram Rajan, chief economist at the \nInternational Monetary Fund, presented a paper in 2005 warning of a \"catastrophic meltdown\" and was \nmocked as a \"Luddite\" by Mr. Summers. \nMeanwhile, some investment bankers — at Goldman Sachs in particular — were betting against the positions \nthey were pushing on their customers. An elaborate house of cards had been constructed in which bad \nconsumer loans were bundled into securities, which, were certified as sound by rating agencies paid by \nthe banks and then insured via credit-default swaps. One risky bet was stacked on top of another, and in \nretrospect the collapse of the whole edifice, along with the loss of jobs, homes, pensions and political \nconfidence, seems inevitable. \nHow did this happen? Mr. Ferguson is no conspiracy theorist; nor is he inclined toward structural or \nsystemic explanations. Markets are not like tectonic plates, shifting on their own. Visible hands write \nlaws and make deals, and in this case a combination of warped values and groupthink seems to have driven \nvery intelligent men (and they were mostly men) toward folly. In addition to business and government, Mr. \nFerguson aims his critique at academia, suggesting that the discipline of economics and more than a few \nprominent economists were corrupted by consulting fees, seats on boards of directors and membership in \nthe masters of the universe club. \nwhen he challenges some of these professors, in particular those who held positions of responsibility in \nthe white House or in the Federal Reserve, they are reduced to stammering obfuscation — markets are \ncomplicatedl Who could have predicted? I don't see any conflict of interest — and occasionally provoked \nto testiness. Mr. Ferguson, for his part, cannot always contain his incredulity or rein in his sarcasm. \noccasionally his voice pipes up from off camera, saying things like, \"You can't be serious!\" \nBut it is hard to imagine a movie more serious, and more urgent, than \"Inside Job.\" There are a few \navenues that might have been explored more thoroughly, in particular the effects of the crisis on \nordinary, non-wall-street-connected workers and homeowners. The end of the film raises a disturbing \nquestion, as Mr. Damon exhorts viewers to demand changes in the status quo so that the trends associated \nwith unchecked speculation of the kind that caused the last crisis — rising inequality, neglect of \nproductive capacity, endless cycles of boom and bust — might be reversed. \nThis call to arms makes you wonder why anger of the kind so eloquently expressed in \"Inside Job\" has been \nso inchoate. And through no fault of its own, the film may leave you dispirited as well as enraged. Its \nfate is likely to be that of other documentaries: praised in some quarters, nitpicked in others and \nshrugged off by those who need its message most. Which is a shame. \n\"Inside Job\" is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Some drug and sex references and pervasive \nobscenity, though not the verbal kind."}]