In colour and 2.35:1 screen ratio, 108 minutes. Written and directed by Charles Ferguson. Produced by Charles Ferguson and Audrey Mars.

This documentary travels over territory that one associates with Michael Moore – the catastrophic financial collapse and subsequent recession of 2008. However, Ferguson eschews the very subjective style of Moore, providing an assembly of images and interviews with an accompanying commentary read by Matt Damon. But Ferguson does share values with Moore: he points approvingly to the regulatory framework introduced by Roosevelt in the 1930s and sees the intervening decades up until the late 1970s as one of steady control and probity. There is an element of truth in this viewpoint. But to claim that it was a period without major financial crises is to overlook the how US dominance engineered that stability. A stability that cost the lowest segments of US society and vast areas among the oppressed peoples dearly. Such crises are endemic in the system: casino style finance just made it more volatile when the serious disruption arrived.

The film is divided into five sections: these present the developments behind the crisis: the mechanics of it when it arrived: the subsequent recession: and most depressingly, the lack of accountability amongst its leaders: and thus the spectre of the next crisis. The information about the scandals, the corruption and the chief villains is not new. However, Ferguson does make it accessible to audiences who have been spared the complicated economic study with which this behaviour was justified. So we get ‘leverage’, ‘Collateralised Debt Obligations’, ‘Credit default swaps’ and ‘sub-prime mortgages’ explained with simple charts and simple English. The suffering victims of this appear rarely, much less than in a Michael Moore film; but there are a few telling moments.

The film’s tale focuses on the United States, heart of the crisis, but it does bring in voices and effects from the global environment. The film kicks off with a pre-credit picture of the Icelandic bubble – the most extreme example of wild, unregulated bank gambling. This is followed by a narrative of the dubious changes and dubious justifications that came from the Reagan, Clinton and Bush administrations. It is a very sorry tale, though in retrospect there were an awful lot of voices warning of the disaster ahead.

It is a grim tale, and it is depressing that so many people and institutions were so blind. I can remember school history classes where the books only disagreed, not about whether there would be crises, but about how cycles of crises worked. The film’s interviews show a bevy of figures who [like Gordon Brown] claim that crisis is a fact of the past. I spotted Mervyn King in the background of one of the meetings where financial leaders assiduously ignored the evidence before their eyes.

This brings us to the section on accountability. Here a series of failed executives walk off into retirement brazenly hanging on to their ill-gotten loot. Ferguson suggests that the financial sector has taken control of the government. The basic narrative proposes a successful conspiracy, peopled with knaves, fools and passive onlookers. This overlooks the anarchy of the market and the class nature of the state, the underlying motors of this disaster.

Whilst the film’s narrative is a depressing affair, there are moment of sardonic humour. The shameless hubris and unrepentant demeanour of the perpetrators is both tragic and comic. My favourite moment is when the seven Chief Executive Officers of the financial giants apologised to a Congressional Committee and promised not to do it again. The Chairman remarked that he had constituents who had actually robbed some of their banks, and that they also pleaded an apology and a promise never to do so again!

This is the sort of documentary many of us watch on television, where it will doubtless appear fairly soon. However, Ferguson has carefully produced the film to show up well on the big screen. Many of the interviews and contemporary reports are cropped to a narrower film ratio, but he constantly injects widescreen settings. The opening Icelandic segment has beautiful shots of the icy wastes of that country. Perhaps a visual warning of the wastes that awaits when the next crisis turns up.

Winner of The 2011 Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary.