Inside Job (2010)

This year Inside Job was the winner in the documentary category. It beat Gasland, Restrepo, Wasteland and Exit Through the Gift Shop. Personally I would have liked to see Exit Through the Gift Shop win the statue. I have not seen Restrepo and Wasteland, so I can’t judge those two, but does Inside Job deserve its Oscar?

Of course I can’t look into the minds of the people who pick the winners, but I think this is the movie which has won because of its subject. Inside Job explains the financial crisis. It looks at the causes and tries to answer who was responsible for it. It’s not a flashy exciting subject, but Inside Job manages to explain it all in an interesting and fascinating way. At the end of the film you have an idea about the current issues with the financial system.

The biggest part of the movie consists of interviews with a lot of different people who have something to do with the financial system (for example the French minister of finance and various professors). Matt Damon does the narration for the film and between the interviews shots of cities are used taken from a helicopter. Especially these kind of shots combined with music from the eighties managed to grab my attention. So the editing was excellent.

I was also happy to see that when the responsible people were interviewed they were confronted by some very direct questions. With some of them you can clearly see that they don’t know how to respond. If you haven’t seen the next film I’ll be reviewing, The Company Men, I advise you to watch that movie after this one (starting with Inside Job) as The Company Men shows the effect of the crisis on people working at big businesses. To me it was a perfect combination.

Inside Job was interesting, but personally I liked both Exit Through the Gift Shop and Gasland more. The way this documentary discusses its subject is flawless and if you want to gain more knowledge about the crisis then you can’t miss it.

Score: 7