LONDON: After the success of Chris Smith’s documentary charting the calamity that was the Fyre music festival, it’s no surprise that his latest investigation has been so eagerly anticipated. After lifting the lid on the catastrophically mismanaged Fyre festival, Smith turns his attention to Operation Varsity Blues – the US federal investigation into a criminal conspiracy to influence college admissions at a number of top American universities. This time round, however, he’s taken a slightly different approach.
“Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal” is listed as “starring” Matthew Modine. While the interviews in the film feature the real-life subjects, Smith opts to use Modine in a series of recreations of FBI wiretapped phonecalls between Rick Singer and his clients. Singer is the man at the heart of the 2019 scandal, the mastermind who pedaled his so-called side doors into college for wealthy parents willing to hand over enormous amounts of money to guarantee their children a spot. And Smith, via Modine, recreates their conversations down to the last, damning word.
It’s an unusual technique, but one that works. Modine portrays the salesman-like Singer as a persuasive, friendly counsellor who only wants the best for his clients’ kids, while pocketing a small fortune for his company along the way. Combined with frank interviews with investigators, and some of those caught up in Singer’s rigged system, it makes for a surprisingly captivating movie. Smith’s film is at its best when laying bare the sheer, unimaginably elitist sense of privilege that led so many parents to buy their way into top colleges. And it’s at its most thought-provoking when drawing attention to the all-pervading sense of injustice that sparked such vitriolic public response to those found guilty of cheating the system. “Operation Varsity Blues” is, much like Smith’s other work, the kind of film that makes viewers rage at the injustice of it all.
