From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia.
Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
Before 2008 a two-hour movie, however well made, about the intricacies of international banking would have found a niche audience at best. But Charles Ferguson, the American director of Inside Job, believes that two years on from the worst financial crisis in decades people are angry enough to make his film a potential hit. What motivates him is a very American concern with accountability. "There's not been a single criminal prosecution of anyone for their responsibility in causing these problems," he says. "These people have not been prosecuted - and they all still have their money too". At 55 Charles Ferguson is hardly a young firebrand. He got rich consulting for high tech companies. In the mid-90s he sold his business to Microsoft and since then has written extensively on information technology. But in 2007 with No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent into Chaos he became an Oscar-nominated film-maker. He feels the inside story of what happened to the US economy two years ago - and what happened internationally as a result - is at least as important. "The essence of what happened is quite simple," he says. "It's a heist movie - but the heist was conducted by the people running the banks rather than by people walking into the banks with guns. "I think it's important for people to understand the role that the political system played and the role that academia played." Charles Ferguson and the distributors Sony Pictures know that high-profile productions such as An Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 9/11 uncovered a hunger for good-looking documentaries on big themes. So Inside Job is filmed as well as many feature films, has a specially-written score, and a big-name narrator in Matt Damon. But at heart the project's driven by Mr Ferguson's obvious anger and bafflement at a system which let his country down so badly. He says the film's for anyone, left or right, who wants to understand what happened. "This is a completely bi-partisan problem in US political terms," he adds. "It was done to us equally by Democrats and Republicans. "The final section of the film makes the point that unfortunately President Obama appointed to run economic policy in his administration a group of people who contributed to the crisis." Absent from the film is any spokesperson for the current administration or for the regulators. The director says it wasn't for want of trying. Mr Ferguson says: "I asked everyone from the president on down and every single one of them said no. "This was particularly disappointing because this is a group of people I've known personally for twenty years. I've known Larry Summers for a long time and Rahm Emanuel. No-one in the administration would speak to me even off the record." Despite this, Mr Ferguson can boast an impressive cast-list - though some such as Glenn Hubbard (once chief economic adviser at the White House) and Professor Frederic Mishkin of Columbia Business School seem soon to regret agreeing to face his dogged interviewing style. Mr Ferguson displays an almost Puritan outrage at the failure to apologise for - or in some cases even acknowledge - what has gone wrong. "American banking is very much in denial," he says. "Even in my private and off-the-record conversations with financial executives I've not encountered a single honest expression of remorse or shame or guilt. "I raised this too with Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and with the French finance minister Christine Lagarde - they both agreed that they've yet to hear any expression of regret." "Those responsible blame 'the system'. Or they blame the bubble caused by irresponsible borrowers. "Some of them blame low interest rates. In a grim way it's actually amusing to watch them blame anyone except themselves." Inside Job has already been praised by critics in the US. It opens in the UK in the new year, but this week it was dropped into the London Film Festival at the last moment. As he hurried off to the London screening I asked Charles Ferguson what the most important lesson is in his film. "Oh that's simple. That finance is too important to be left to the financiers."
Hollywood heavyweight Matt Damon narrates Mr Ferguson's documentary
Mr Ferguson says he is angry that bank bosses haven't properly accepted blame
Mr Ferguson says Dominique Strauss-Kahn also confirmed banks had yet to express regret
Inside Job Review
oney: it's a prime motivational force in life and in heist movies, but until recently it wasn't a subject that cinema handled very seriously.
That seems to have changed. It’s hardly surprising that the economic crisis of 08 inspired a slew of books and documentaries, but the sheer volume and quality of the reporting is impressive, especially on a subject that most of us struggle to comprehend.
CAST DETAILS
Michael Moore was first out of the traps withCapitalism: A Love Story, a typically pungent polemic that laid out the gross inequalities of the free enterprise system in its current form. Chris Smith upped the ante with the apocalyptic Collapse. In Inside Job Charles Ferguson doesn’t take such a wide view. Unlike the others, he seems to believe capitalism itself isn’t the problem; instead he hones in on the system failures that allowed a preventable crisis to bring the global economy to the brink of collapse.
Ferguson has an unusual background for a filmmaker. According to Wikipedia he has a PhD in political science from MIT, became a government consultant on technology, founded one of the first dot.com companies (which he sold to Microsoft before the bubble burst for $133 million). For three years he was a fellow of the influential think tank The Brookings Institute, and he’s a lifelong member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In 2005, he became so incensed by the Bush administration’s inept handling of the occupation of Iraq that he founded his own film company to make No End In Sight. The film won a prize at Sundance and was nominated for an Academy Award.
In other words, Inside Job is something of an inside job itself. But don’t let that worry you. Fergusonunderstands who is pulling the levers, he has enviable access, and he speaks these people’s language – but he doesn’t pull any punches. On the contrary, the cross-examination his interview subjects receive is so pointed that you can see the shock and dismay creeping over their faces as it belatedly dawns on them what they’ve got themselves into. It’s a robust style of interviewing that’s more common here, but virtually unknown in the US, where politicians and businessmen don’t expect to be challenged or contradicted.
Inside JobFerguson isn’t hiding behind any fig-leaf of journalistic objectivity, he knows his ground, and he’s clearly incensed by the gross arrogance and greed that rolled back government regulation of the markets and removed any semblance of sound fiscal responsibility in the rush for a fast buck. Because treasury officials, economic advisors and academics are all guzzling from the same trough, there is no longer any objective oversight of economic policy, only an undeclared oligarchy in which the rich get much richer and leave the rest of us to pay the bills.
Narrated by Matt Damon, sleekly edited, fast-paced, and admirably lucid, Inside Jobmanages to be educational, compelling and cathartic, up to a point. It is therapeutic seeing some of the culprits subjected to a grilling on a camera. Too bad so many of the big fish refused to be interviewed (you can find them listed on the film’s website), and of course it would be far sweeter if we had any hope that they would eventually face legal retribution. As for signs of systemic reform to make sure this can’t happen again, don’t hold your breath. If Inside Job were a heist film, the usual suspects appear to have got away with it again.
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