What do we know about the financial crisis of 2008? It seems that there are no persons who did not hear about this financial collapse or even experience its consequences. However, if an individual has little knowledge about the definite aspects of the economic processes, the picture of the crisis is rather abstract and can be perceived as the undetermined notion which influences all the economic, political, social, and even personal aspects of the people’s life, but it is difficult to indicate its factors or boundaries.
Charles Ferguson presented his vision of the economic crisis of 2008 in the documentary film Inside Job which became the real sensation in 2010, and it was highly estimated by the ordinary public and by the critics. The secret of the film’s success is in the fact that Charles Ferguson focuses on the financial crisis as the multidimensional phenomenon and vividly discusses all its aspects in detail and with references to the most controversial elements which can seem to be insignificant at first sight, but contribute to developing the whole picture.
Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job is a winner of the Academy Award, and the film is discussed as one of the most successful critical representation of the extreme financial situation which made the population of the whole world be dependent on the process’s development and its dangerous consequences. That is why it is possible to give this documentary film the highest evaluation in five stars because of its currency, acute character, provocative interviews, complexity, completeness of the research, and intriguing conclusions.
The viewer becomes involved in discussing the peculiarities of the financial crisis from the first pictures. The development of the collapse is presented in detail with paying much attention to its key aspects which can be discussed as the causes of the crisis or as its influential factors.
Ferguson concentrates on the period of deregulation in the USA, on effect of the economic freedom of the enterprises, on the domination of the banks, and as a result, on the following economic absolute recession. All these notions seem to be familiar to the audience, but do all the people know what these processes can mean for the economy of the country?
Some critics can state that Charles Ferguson’s film is rather subjective in its discussion of the issue. Nevertheless, the value of the film is in the director’s unique opinion on the aspects of the financial crisis which are common for the public, but presented from the other, unordinary point of view which is supported by the author’s proper research.
Charles Ferguson is rather provocative in conducting the interviews with the speakers and those economists who were actively involved in the economic depression, and this controversy make the viewers develop their own conclusions.
The situation of the financial crisis is perceived as absolutely real and influential, and such names as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Lehman Brothers are not only the symbols of the crisis, but the companies in which definite persons worked and became the human objects of the crisis as numbers of the other people who suffered from the economic bubbles and the following collapses.
Charles Ferguson’s Inside Job is worth seeing because a viewer has the opportunity to observe the peculiarities of the great financial crisis of 2008 not only as an abstract economic process but also as the global phenomenon in which the lives of the individuals were involved. The financial crisis is presented is a chain of the personal decisions, but it is impossible to blame one person. Thus, the director states that any economic phenomenon is interdependent with society.