Another tale of them 'R' us

"Enron, The Smartest Guys in the Room" is many things, but it is not a mystery. Most of the way through this film, someone speaks the words that are written all over this documentary tale. The words are written all over the long, simmered-down news coverage. The words are written all over our vulnerable, susceptible and complicit selves.

The words: "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

This is a great movie for shaking your head in neatly encapsulated disgust. It is a great film for feeling the shape of unbounded scandal. It is not controversial like some documentaries that have gotten tons more attention. But then, maybe it is.

If you let yourself feel it, there is more going on than a few executives bilking billions of dollars from employees, stock market players and Californian energy consumers. There is more going on than misguided, zealous brokers, lawyers, accountants and politicians.

There is us.

Not the us angry at the them. Not the us feeling ever more victimized. Well, that too. Perhaps the passive controversy that this film offers is that we relish the sounds of "too good to be true." We bubble toward the benefits of "too good to be true." We fuel the self-deceptions of "too good to be true." We are drawn to the smell of the blood spilled by "too good to be true."

The documentary, "Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room," does what a parade of headlines and six-minute TV analyses cannot accomplish. It helps us feel the size and heft and momentum of the postmodern character that all of us represent.

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Chuck Jaffee lives in Nevada City. Find links to his other articles for The Union at www.startlets.com.