The Flaw (2011)

basics...
A True Stories documentary about the financial crisis of the past few years, how it happened and how it could have been prevented had anyone cared to stop and think.

brilliant...

The Flaw would sit well alongside Starsuckers and Countdown to Zero as an example of an entertaining documentary that shines a light on a less palatable part of the modern world. Where the other films took on the media and the threat of nuclear disaster, the flaw looks at the state of the global economy before and after the financial crisis. Pieced together from interviews with leading economic figures, cartoons of the 50's that celebrated consumer society and graphics that attempt to explain the numbers behind the sub-prime mortgages, stock futures and other impenetrable financial double-speak, The Flaw is as enlightening as it is baffling. It takes a large view of the crisis and then picks out smaller, personal viewpoints from people who are mortgaged to the hilt and a young man who used to work on Wall Street and now gives tours there. I can't say I understood everything that was discussed, but it was all a very convincing indictment of all of us who believed that wages could keep going up alongside house prices and falling consumer prices. The confusion was more a result of my own understanding and resistance to numbers than a fault of the film.

briefly...
Making finance fun, or at least a bit more accessible than previously, The Flaw filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge and entertained me while doing so.