Post by StevePulaski on Feb 25, 2018 9:42:36 GMT -5
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail (2016)
Directed by: Steve James
Directed by: Steve James
Abacus Bank founder Thomas Sung.
Rating: ★★½
Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is an aggressively fine documentary from Steve James, the same man who has brought us some of the most essential documentaries in the last several years. James has long sought to chronicle the ambitions of his subjects, as well as loaning their stories to interpretation of a larger significance. It's what made his 1994 documentary, Hoop Dreams, such a rousing success and what made The Interrupters, a look at the unsung heroes trying to prevent gang violence in Chicago, such a riveting watch as well. Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is far more unambiguous, as it recounts the impact of the devastating 2007 financial crisis through the eyes of still the only bank to be charged and trialed for the economic collapse.
That bank is the Abacus Federal Savings Bank, which resides in Manhattan's Chinatown district and has since 1984. Founded by Chinese-American Thomas Sung, Abacus was erected with the intent to provide Chinese people in the densely populated community a safe and reliable institution they trusted to hold their money. While Sung's wife, Hwei-Lin, removed herself from the draining environment of the financial industry, his daughters, Jill, Vera, and Heather, all eventually gravitated towards working with their father and helping him realize his vision. This vision was mostly smooth sailing until the ultimate storm hit and rocked the family and the community.
James linearly tells the story of the charges levied against Abacus, specifically for mortgage fraud and an attempt to defraud insurance companies, such as Fannie May, by issuing subprime loans and forging business reports. A teller at their Manhattan office was found to be running a money-laundering scheme, which was discovered when the falsified loans began to surface. Several people lost down-payments of significant sums on their new homes, and what transpired was a lengthy investigation into Abacus's operations as well as Sung family.
By now, many of us know one of the primary causes of the 2007 economic crisis. Big banks loaned subprime mortgages to low and middle-income individuals, fully aware that they were junk and that the respective individuals likely couldn't make payments. The mortgages were then repackaged as high-rated securities, and by then, it was only a matter of time before the loans blew up and the housing market, which was always assumed to be safe, took a nosedive and produced thousands of foreclosures. Any collateral consequences brought against big banks directly linked to this meltdown, such as CitiBank and JPMorgan Chase, could've collectively corrupted the global financial system; hence the term "too big to fail," said in justification for not pressing charges against the main orchestrators in this collapse. In contrast, Abacus is among one of the smallest banks in the country and was a target, and unlike those powerhouses, wasn't offered a consolation punishment but instead an out in the form of a felony charge and a crippling fine. Call them "small enough to jail."
James looks at the tight-knit Sung family as they proceed head-first into this exhausting trial, which took several months and even led to a potential liquidity crisis for the bank when an AP report on the story caused $44 million in withdrawals from Abacus's main branch. Throughout the documentary exist great scenes between the family, as they nervously operate during the trial period. Never lost is the seriousness of the Sung family going up against the government in an arduous, David and Goliath-esque battle when they thought firing their criminal employee and uncooking the books was enough. Much of the film is captured in a manner that doesn't even attempt to downplay the significance of the court case at hand that when Hwei-Lin and Jill debate about the trial amongst themselves as Thomas quietly eats a chicken sandwich, their banter between one another, which eventually includes telling their patriarch to moisten his sandwich with mayonnaise, could be seen as necessary comic relief.
James's documentary is largely effective, but not nearly as inspired as some of his greatest works, such as Life Itself. It lacks the unwavering humanity behind events that James so often finds in his subjects. Even the intimate moments between members of the Sung family often explicitly serve to contextualize the trial moreso than their relationship to one another. The film makes the history of Abacus and legal proceedings easy to follow, but it also doesn't engage in the same way other documentaries like Inside Man or I.O.U.S.A. were able to thanks to their intriguing data and theory analysis. The smaller, more centralized approach should've greatly aided James, and in some ways it absolutely does, but the trial is such an exorbitant focal point that it prevents any deeper humanization of the family from taking place. There's some good commentary about the community of Chinese immigrants in New York, but again, it's a footnote.
The takeaway from Abacus: Small Enough to Jail — besides the shocking fact that it's James's first film to get an Oscar nomination despite boasting an award-winning filmography in and of itself — is that one bank indeed paid the price in legal fees and unwarranted publicity from the economic crisis, the likes of which their involvement couldn't even be compared to that of other conglomerates. At the tail-end of the documentary, one activist sums it up better than I ever could, saying that, at the end of the trial, Abacus proved that the America we believe in still does exist, but it will cost you $10 million in the long run.
NOTE: Abacus: Small Enough to Jail is available to watch on PBS's "Frontline" website, along with numerous other documentaries, free of charge.
Directed by: Steve James.