The Eighth Day (2018)

Directed by: Yan Ting Yuen, Robert Kosters | 92 minutes | documentary | With: Jan Peter Balkenende, Wouter Bos, Mervyn King, Yves Leterme, Didier Reynders, Jean-Claude Trichet, Nout Wellink

In September 2008, the American financial services company Lehman Brothers collapses. It is the beginning of an unprecedented banking crisis that also has consequences in the Netherlands and Belgium. The Belgian bank Fortis had taken over ABN AMRO in 2007, with 5 million Dutch customers. If the bank gets into serious trouble due to the ensuing credit crisis, the Belgian and Dutch governments have to intervene. Ten years later, the protagonists of that time look back in ‘The eighth day’.
Filmmaker Yan Ting Yuen and journalist Robert Kosters reconstruct this period in the autumn of 2008 in this interesting documentary. It offers a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at the decision-making of the time, with financial leaders Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the European Central Bank; Nout Wellink, President of the Nederlandsche Bank and Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England; and the responsible politicians: the Prime Ministers Jan Peter Balkenende (Netherlands) and Yves Leterme (Belgium) and their respective Finance Ministers Wouter Bos and Didier Reynders.

Quite candidly, the former protagonists tell how they acted those days, what they thought and how they tried to cope with the enormous challenges. A crucial question that Wouter Bos asks himself is central: How can you reassure the public and prevent panic without doing violence to the truth? His answer: by not telling the whole truth. The makers make this visible by contrasting interviews and statements from 2008 with the reflections from 2018. In public at the time, the tone was much more optimistic than the leaders were in their deliberations. It also exposes the cultural differences between different European countries and how the lack of trust between Belgium and the Netherlands complicates matters enormously, especially if the only solution is nationalization: the governments take over Fortis and ABN AMRO. Even ten years later, the battle between the Belgians and the “Hollanders” still hurts, especially among the Belgian protagonists. The role of Wouter Bos in this is striking, including in the way in which Bos himself now looks back on it with satisfaction.

‘The eighth day’ has the structure of a ‘traditional’ documentary with many so-called “talking heads” who talk the narrative together in a studio. The leading figures interviewed are all men who talk about a politically and administratively complex situation surrounding complicated financial issues. They do so, grayer and politically retired, moreover about what went on behind the scenes during the rescue operation, something the public is not aware of. The rollercoaster of those days with all the ups and downs and new crises that have to be averted, was difficult for the main players at the time to overcome and understand.

It deserves a lot of praise that the makers manage to keep the whole comprehensible to the public, who may have followed the crisis globally at the time and whose memories have now faded. Directors Yuen and Kosters enliven the studio setting by means of news reports and short impressions in which actors portray the silhouettes of the policymakers. ‘The Eighth Day’ offers a fascinating look back at the Fortis / ABN AMRO rescue operation in an unprecedented financial crisis. But what have we actually learned from it? The protagonists of the time are concerned. The causes seem barely addressed and the danger of a new crisis is lurking. That is perhaps the most disturbing outcome.