Cannes films tap drama of financial crisis
Wednesday, 19 May 2010
CANNES, May 18 (AFP): The scorched earth of the financial world has yielded a rich harvest for film-makers at the Cannes film festival, where documentaries and dramas are tapping the emotion behind the crisis.
Among the non-fiction at the world's biggest film event, "Inside Job" by US documentary-maker Charles Ferguson hit critics hard on Saturday with a surgical analysis of who caused the financial crisis and how.
A cocktail of financial deregulation and near-psychotic behaviour was to blame for the meltdown, it suggests, cranking up the emotions with swift editing, stirring music and a voice-over by Hollywood star Matt Damon.
"I think this is the first comprehensive film about the crisis," Ferguson told AFP. "This was a bank robbery that was committed by the man who owns the bank. Before he robbed the bank he paid off the police."
Last year another US film-maker, Michael Moore, released "Capitalism: A Love Story", but critics in Cannes judged Ferguson's film a more weighty effort.
"Ironically, (this) anti-capitalist commodity could well become a money-maker," wrote the top film magazine Variety.
"Inside Job" points the finger at individuals including former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who like a number of other key players declined to be interviewed.
Ferguson fills their silence with other witnesses: government ministers, bankers, lobbyists, economists and a psychologist, plus a Manhattan madame who said she fixed call girls for top bosses at all the major investment banks.
Among the non-fiction at the world's biggest film event, "Inside Job" by US documentary-maker Charles Ferguson hit critics hard on Saturday with a surgical analysis of who caused the financial crisis and how.
A cocktail of financial deregulation and near-psychotic behaviour was to blame for the meltdown, it suggests, cranking up the emotions with swift editing, stirring music and a voice-over by Hollywood star Matt Damon.
"I think this is the first comprehensive film about the crisis," Ferguson told AFP. "This was a bank robbery that was committed by the man who owns the bank. Before he robbed the bank he paid off the police."
Last year another US film-maker, Michael Moore, released "Capitalism: A Love Story", but critics in Cannes judged Ferguson's film a more weighty effort.
"Ironically, (this) anti-capitalist commodity could well become a money-maker," wrote the top film magazine Variety.
"Inside Job" points the finger at individuals including former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who like a number of other key players declined to be interviewed.
Ferguson fills their silence with other witnesses: government ministers, bankers, lobbyists, economists and a psychologist, plus a Manhattan madame who said she fixed call girls for top bosses at all the major investment banks.