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Oil Money, and Where It Flows
‘Big Men’ Looks at Ghanaian Oil Discovery
Big Men (On Komos Ernergy Digging oil now in Senegal Lol)

A scene from the documentary “Big Men,” about the 2007 discovery of oil off Ghana’s coast. Credit Jonathan Furmanski

Not for nothing does “Big Men,” Rachel Boynton’s astonishing documentary about the 2007 discovery of oil off the coast of Ghana, open with a quotation on greed from the economist Milton Friedman. Dropping us into a perfect storm of avarice, this cool and incisive snapshot of global capitalism at work is as remarkable for its access as for its refusal to judge.

Tagging neither heroes nor villains, Ms. Boynton wonders instead who benefits from, and who is harmed by, the billions of dollars in play. Should the enormous risks and staggering costs of getting to “first oil” guarantee its finder — in this case, a small Texas start-up called Kosmos Energy — a sweetheart deal from the Ghanaian government? The amiable chief executive of Kosmos at the time, Jim Musselman, certainly hopes so; eager to satisfy his corporate backers, and with Ms. Boynton’s camera in tow, he schmoozes with West African royalty and glad-hands middlemen.

Back home, the 2008 financial downturn throws a wrench in the deal making (and in Mr. Musselman’s career), and new leadership in Ghana necessitates frantic renegotiations. While the big men fight for percentages, we travel to Nigeria to witness firsthand the trickle-down consequences of more than 50 years of oil extraction — and an estimated 400 billion petrodollars stolen or wasted. Apocalyptic scenes of poverty, corruption and violence greet us, a fever dream of Ghana’s possible future; but it’s here, amid the chaos of destroyed pipelines and polluted townships, that the film’s disdain for overt blame pays off, turning what could have been a standard fat-cat shaming into a more nuanced portrait of universal self-interest.

Through it all, in comfortable offices and on dirt roads, at lavish dinners and in crummy encampments, Ms. Boynton is there, her pointed off-screen questions revealing a swarm of competing concerns. As we saw in her first feature, “Our Brand Is Crisis” (2006) — about the involvement of American spin doctors in a Bolivian election — her style is careful, her mind curious and her approach open-ended. Vilifying no one, she and her wily cinematographer, Jonathan Furmanski, nevertheless nudge us to notice telling details: the heavy gold rings adorning the fingers of a Nigerian government official during a discussion of corruption and Mr. Musselman’s smooth deflection of a thorny taxation issue.

Bringing to life a netherworld of shifting agreements and shuffling allegiances, “Big Men” unfurls a complicated story teeming with masked militants, well-fed politicians, reassuring suits and the desperate poor. To the film’s major players, whether the development of Ghanaian oil will be a boon or a curse to the nation’s citizens seems irrelevant; when money is talking, those who have none also have no voice