Alex Gibney: A Year in Pictures

by Matt



In 2005, director Alex Gibney released what might be the best expose ever put to film. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room tamed the convoluted technical data of the Enron collapse and painted a detailed portrait of corruption run rampant in a deregulated economy. It was nominated for an Oscar, is required viewing in most business schools, and is pretty much the only thing on CNBC anymore.¹ In 2008, he continued his legacy for political muckraking with the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side, which explored torture policies of POWs, and Gonzo, a biography of controversial writer Hunter Thompson. Gibney's films combine an investigative journalist's attention to detail with the frenetic energy and great storytelling sensibilities of someone like Martin Scorsese.

Flash forward another two years to the present day. 2010 is a year of severe political unrest in the United States. Citizens are furious to find themselves at the mercy of gamblers on Wall Street and twice as furious that politicians seek to put a stop to this. Campaign ads rule the airways, 3D rules the theaters, and Gibney returns to the screens with enough great films to populate the entire filmography of a great documentarian, all in the span of a few months.

Casino Jack & The United States of Money

------Original Message------
From: Jack Abramoff (Dir-DC-GOV)
Subject: re
...
Why would you want to make a documentary?
No one watches documentaries. You should make an action film!

These opening titles from Gibney's biography of the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff are not only wise words (are more people going to see Superman Returnsor Waiting for Superman?), but they tie together many themes and motifs in the film. Abramoff used to produce films to promote African rebel groups, starting with documentaries before abandoning them in favor of action-packed morality tales starring Dolph Lundgren. He incriminated himself with snarky emails about his exploitation of Indian reservations. Wearing a black trench coat and fedora to his indictment, he seemed to eagerly assume the role of villain in the ensuing media frenzy. The hearing was conducted by many of the legislators he'd personally gotten elected.

Casino Jack shines a powerful spotlight into the shadowy realities of so-called "free markets." Libertarian ideals are personified by the island commonwealth of Saipan, whose paper-thin economy Abramoff helped establish. As the film recounts the email exchanges between Abramoff and his associates, I couldn't help but think back to the traders' shocking candor about robbing elderly Californians in The Smartest Guys in the Room.

Casino Jack is equal parts political muckraking and character study, but Abramoff is only a part of that character. Gibney places the entire Reagan-era politic under scrutiny, considering its roots as a rebellion against rebellion following 1960s hippie counterculture. Gibney utilizes an upbeat soundtrack and old movie clips to build his trademark energy, which makes the film play like... well, an action movie.

My Trip to Al-Qaeda

They say hindsight is 20-20. It's easy to look back over the past decade and spot mistakes and warnings of government corruption, but I think journalist Lawrence Wright earned the right to shoot off his mouth. "It was all so predictable," he disdainfully remarks about American use of torture in the wake of terrorist attacks. He penned the 1998 Edward Zwick thriller The Siege, about American human rights violations in the wake of terrorist attacks.

With the possible exception of Robert MacNamera in The Fog of War, I don't think I've ever seen a more fascinating subject of a documentary. Rather than a standard interview format, Wright tells his story via a one-man show. He stands in a dark room, empty save for a cluttered office desk and video screen, which shows illustrative footage such as news clips and interviews. This format achieves an intimacy rare to film, as if we're watching the world from a Cartesian control room within his brain.

He talks about how The Siege sparked controversy in the Muslim world which led to the bombing of a Planet Hollywood in South Africa, and he talks about the book it inspired him to write. "I'm not responsible for the terror; I know that. But people perished who would be alive if I had not written that movie. A little girl would be skipping down the sidewalk in Kensington. That bomb in Cape Town was really aimed at me, at my imagination. And I needed to know why."

His research leads him to the Middle East, where he meets terrorists and befriends Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law. It pays off, winning him a Pulitzer Prize, but it puts him in an uneasy place, torn between ideals journalistic objectivity and his hatred for the jihadists. How would you act during an interview with bin Laden?

During his travels, though, an even more sinister tower looms. The hypothetical martial law policies of The Siege begin to come to fruition. Suspects are captured and tortured without trial. Wright himself becomes victim of an illegal wiretapping. And worst of all, this was exactly what Al-Qaeda had planned, to drive a wedge between Islam and the West and exploit it in a public relations war most Americans didn't even know was being waged.

Freakonomics: "Pure Corruption"

Freakonomics isn't a very good film. I'd probably describe it as the Four Rooms of non-fiction, but the typical problems with anthologies are actually severely aggravated here. The four films not only cover the an entire spectrum of quality, but there is absolutely no attempt to reconcile these diverse creative visions. Four Rooms was at least cohesive, and it built up momentum as it went along. Freakonomics, despite some good installments and interesting topics, feels haphazardly pasted together.

It's almost a shame that anthology films often house some of the best short films around, and this one is no exception. The cream of the crop, as you might have predicted, is Gibney's film "Pure Corruption," which offers a cursory study of cheaters at sumo wrestling.

It shouldn't happen. Sumo is a sacred ritual within the Shinto faith, a means to cleanse oneself of evil (or something like that; I said it was cursory), practiced in one of the least corrupt nations in the developed world, yet Gibney's film reveals some shocking info about what goes on behind the scenes, typifying a pattern of repression in many parts of Japanese society, leaving wounds to fester away at the inside. As always, incentives play an important role, and I find it somewhat gratuitous that Gibney felt the need to spell out its economic allegory.

But this isn't just a film about profit margins. It's big picture about big men in loincloths, both mentally and physically. The sumo footage used to highlight the talking heads brings a visceral quality to this tale of dishonesty and murder.

Client 9: The Rise of Eliot Spitzer

There seem to be two key virtues to most of Gibney's work. First, his ability to distill complex chains of causation (money-laundering, covert torture, or the birth of a social movement) to a simple essence, so that laymen like myself can actually make sense of them. Second, his Errol-Morris-esque combination of interviews, imagery, and music to create an intimate sense of his subject's worldview. These skill sets are perfectly suited to the story of Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace, which makes it all the more disappointing that Client 9 seems so uneven.

Maybe this is one case where reality is blander than fiction, but I still have no sense of why Spitzer - a vigilante attorney general and governor, notorious for his intolerance for corruption - would so betray his own virtues and destroy his political career for the sake of chasing tail. Despite his use of interrotron in the Spitzer interviews (a new technique for Gibney), the disgraced politician remains at a distance. Instead of a straightforward telling of his experiences, it becomes a convoluted web of prostitution business models and conspiracy theories.² When films like The Smartest Guys in the Room and Casino Jack balance the technical and personal elements with grace and ease, Client 9 seems much too grounded in hard data.

But don't get the wrong idea. This is still a worthy addition to any filmmaker's canon. Despite never really cracking Spitzer's surface, his interviews are weirdly fascinating. The interrotron offers a greater appreciation for his vulnerability speaking about his periods of weakness. He tries to frame his story as a Hollywood cliche and repeats the word "hubrus" like a broken record. He wants to be forthright, but he navigates the waters carefully. Can't say I blame him, after what he went through. When you can't even justify your actions to yourself, it's difficult to do so to strangers.

The supporting cast is another story entirely. Spitzer's enemies take great joy in sharing their deep-seeded hatred for him. Their rhetoric transcends exaggeration into downright eccentricity, not unlike the subject of a previous Gibney biography, Hunter S. Thompson. (A PR man hired to discredit Spitzer even invokes the "gonzo brand of journalism.") Spitzer apparently had his own brand of extreme rhetoric when speaking privately, recalling the aggressive banter of cowboy and cop movies.

His associates in the sex industry tell a different story, largely apathetic to his policies. (Perhaps they don't know about the prostitution rings he'd personally busted as attorney general.) His most frequent companion wished to remain anonymous. Rather than just place her in silhouette or blur out her face, Gibney transcribed her interview and hired an actress to recite it. It's an inspired gimmick, one of many touches that give the film a more playful quality, even as it weighs itself down by trying to about more than it is.

The Takeaway

Alex Gibney might be the first auteur of journalism. More than simple education, he's one of a few voices in modern non-fiction to see facts as a tool for deeper truths. Be it about economics, politics, crime, or all of the above, he trains his lens on individuals who define themselves and the world through the media's skewed reflection. It shapes nations and consumes those who gaze too hard.

As the polls close and the new generation of campaigns begin, you might find a little perspective from his films. A picture is worth a thousand words, and I can think of few greater authors on the subject. In a year when documentaries are flourishing in all the theaters no one attends, Gibney has shown himself a cut above most of the competition.


¹ It also was one of the principle sources in college paper which I wrote. The teacher noted that mine was the best in the class. My mother was so proud as, I'm sure, was Gibney's.

² I'm not disputing that there was a political element to the Spitzer investigation (the circumstantial evidence is persuasive, though not enough to draw any definite conclusions), but considering that Spitzer admits to everything, I think the film ascribes too much relevance to it.









Did I mention his films feature music from Tom Waits and Gorillaz?