Enron commercials once proudly promoted the slogan "Ask Why," but that seems all the more ironic after what has transpired with the one-time industry giant. And now we have a film that goes a long way to explain exactly why Enron imploded.

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ranks among the timeliest films of the year. Houston is braced for the trial of former Enron kingpins Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling; the jury is being selected as I write this. Defense lawyers are certain to portray Enron's downfall as far too complex for their vilified clients to have been aware of (despite the fact that both were dumping its stock before the corporation officially was declared bankrupt), but Alex Gibney's documentary skillfully makes sense out of the chaos. Filled with human tragedy (primarily the employees who saw their Enron stock based 401K plans evaporate), this is nothing short of a huge corporate crime--a Ponzi scheme hatched to dupe investors that inevitably collapsed.

Founded by Kenneth Lay in 1985 after merging two natural gas companies, the Titanic and "house of cards" are just two of the running metaphors cited to describe Enron. Anyone believing that Lay and Skilling were innocent victims has probably also responded to confidential emails from former top Nigerian government officials to retrieve multi-millions of withheld assets. If the court allowed, the prosecution should arrange for a private screening to ensure itself of 12 angry jurors. No mercy for these two scam artists, who certainly were aware that Enron was concealing their losses and inflating imaginary profits for years to boost its stock price--even getting a number of banks and the once respected Arthur Anderson accounting firm to go along with the scam. Anderson instantly became the butt of jokes and soon went down in bankruptcy flames, so the defense lawyers won't be accepting former Anderson accountants on the jury either.

The documentary doesn't require that you be the "smartest guy in the room" to comprehend the content. The narrative (voiced by Peter Coyote) breaks down the fuzzy corporate math and identifies the key players through a selected mix of interviews, archive footage, news stories, company audio and videotapes, and other visuals. Essentially, the scheme relied on "creative" bookkeeping that really took off when Skilling came aboard, insisting on "mark to market" tactics that must have become popularized during the brief dot.com boom of the late 1990's. To keep Enron's stock rising, it was vital to produce glowing quarterly reports, and these mythological fantasies became glowingly enhanced through Skilling's methodology--the idea that Enron would estimate its future profits and pass them off as current income.

I'm not sure what fraudulent figures they used to obscure the 1 billion dollar bust suffered in India, but the film plays back Skilling's "asshole" comment when a skeptical New York market analyst asks for hard-core financial statements that Enron has consistently neglected for years. Skilling knows damn well that he's operating with "smoke and mirrors," even parodying his "mark to market" strategy during an in-house skit about the company's "Hypothetical Future Value." If only more Enron employees had realized how close this actually came to reality, more might have sold their stock to preserve their retirement. (One interviewee saw his retirement fund shrink from over $300,000 to $1,200; others weren't even that "lucky")

Most of the research relies on Fortune magazine reporters Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind, who wrote the definitive book on the subject--The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. Thus, the ground had been broken, and the insiders used as sources for the book remain remarkably candid on film. We're sure to hear additional revelations from them as they testify in the upcoming trial.

If we need additional evidence to illustrate what a slimy organization Enron developed, a prominent side story offers a vignette of former Enron executive Lou Lung Pai, who frequented strip clubs and cashed out a questionable $250 million before abruptly leaving the company, eventually divorcing his wife and marrying his favorite stripper (already pregnant with his child). Even more chilling moments take place when overhearing phone conversations from Enron operatives mandating unnecessary rolling blackouts to boost energy prices in deregulated California. Who would've thought that Enron greed would eventually lead to the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

The film makes no claims for being "objective." The muckraking film offers a populist view of the situation despite the fact that interviews with regular employees are sparse. While lowly employees were frozen from selling their stock after it had dipped below the $35/share level, top executives still cashed in some $170 million in stocks and bonuses. Of course, much of that will fill the coffers of lawyers--that's been going on ever since civilization developed written law. Who's going to pay for the 29,000 people who lost their jobs and lost $2 billion in pension funds, however?

Once a darling of Fortune magazine as "America's Most Innovative Company" for six consecutive years (1996 to 2001), the Enron story abounds with Shakespearean tragedy and irony throughout--from the re-enactment of executive Cliff Baxter's suicide to the handcuffing of Lay and Skilling. Of course, additional details can add unseen nuances to the story; otherwise, the upcoming trial would be a slam-dunk for the prosecution. Requiring complicity across a number of fronts to pull off the greatest corporate scam in recent American history, any attempts to portray former CFO Andrew Fastow as scapegoat just don't wash. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room serves as an excellent introduction to the mind-boggling corporate scandal and should be required viewing for anyone that wants to sort out the mess. It should screen for the Lay-Skilling jury*, but the defense lawyers would fight to block it. In fact, be sure to watch this if you have no desire to serve on the jury since this is sure to disqualify you.

*Note: Lay and Skilling were found guilty, but Lay died before the sentencing hearing began. Skilling was sentenced to 24 years and four months in prison and must forfeit $45 million for his part in the massive fraud case.