Steven Soderberg has pulled off a remarkable feat – telling a serious story from a comedic point of view, using Marvin Hamlisch music as a comedic device overlay for a sad and pathetic story – greed run amok in ADM and the tangled, fanciful dreams of a schizophrenic executive who wants to bring ADM down while scamming the company of millions.
Based upon the incredible book by the New York Times writer, Kurt Eichenwald, the story unfolds as if it were a novel. It’s hard to believe that the goons at the top could be so craven, so greedy, so far removed from real life, ensconced in their Midwest empire, cheating every American, 5 cents at a pop, for every bottle of Coke and every Chicken McNugget … as suppliers of fructose (corn-based sweetener) and Lysine, a growth hormone essential to meat production.
Getting back to the Hamlisch music, which is brilliant, reminded me of “The Sting.” The folks who saw it with me felt as if the music were an artificial overlay. One said, “I think they finished the film and weren’t satisfied – so they pasted the music on top of it.”
For me, it fit Soderberg’s experimental style. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a film where music played such an important role – more than supporting the story, but actually telling a counterpoint story – as we watch bunch of buffoons parade around as if they were important, when, in fact, they’re only clowns, albeit a bloodthirsty crew.
I thought it a brilliant casting coup to have Tom Smothers portray Dwayne Andreas, head of ADM. Though but a cameo roll, it captured much of the story for me – the whole ADM world – full of small self-important, entitled, men clowning around; the tragedy of it all - they had neither the moral nor intellectual stature to see themselves for what they were.
Profits and profits alone motivated them. And together with their worldwide competitors, they set about fixing prices, artificially allotting production quotas and setting price to boost their profits on the backs of working men and women around the world.
By the way, the ADM story is perfectly counterpointed in Michael Moore’s latest, “Capitalism.”
Matt Damon captures the insane mindset of Mark Whitacre who wanted to expose ADM for some weird amalgam of moral sensitivity, greed and an ambitious dream to be the heroic savior, and eventual head, of ADM.
Lucas McHugh Carroll brilliantly captures the naiveté of Whitacre’s Midwest wife – a decent sort of woman, but unable to push her way through the tangled web of wealth and comfort. She defends her husband to the end.
One of the saddest pieces of the story (both the book and the film) is how the ADM sharks (attorneys) set out to destroy the case by going after the FBI agents driving the investigation – one of whom is played by Scott Bakula who carefully captures this earnest young agent with a keen sense of justice and doing it right. But in a world of sharks, even the good are eaten alive.
As part of the shifting landscape in America, as we discover how evil the world created by Reagan and deregulation, how the big boys have looted the economy and pillaged the public good, “The Informant” tells one critical piece of the story. That all of this stuff could happen in America boggles the mind, but the America we know today is a far cry from the America envisioned by the Founding Mothers and Fathers, and a million miles away from the social victories won by FDR for The People, yes, the People.
Worth seeing?
For sure! But if you want to wait for Netflix, go ahead.
