Tuesday, January 19, 2016

The Big Short (2015, R)

Watching the trailer for this best picture nominee, I was getting slight American Hustle vibes.  In the film’s opening moments, I saw shades of The Wolf of Wall Street.  Ultimately, though, it that stands quite well on its own and doesn’t need comparisons.  This film is its own animal, and it does a fairly difficult job with a lot of skill, humor, and creativity.

In the years leading up to the housing crisis of 2008, there are those who see the writing on the wall and ready themselves to profit from the crash.  Even as everyone insists that real estate is bulletproof, a handful of men start buying “shorts” on mortgage bonds, essentially betting against the housing market.  Part opportunists, part investigators, and part Cassandra from Greek mythology, they get a picture of just how deep the behind-the-scenes corruption goes.

After seeing this movie, I feel like I actually kind of understand the convoluted financial shell-gaming that was going on at this time.  The film does a phenomenal job explaining the basics of mortgage bonds and shorts for laymen, and what’s more, it does it entertainingly.  Fourth-wall-breaking devices guide us through the bank talk, including voiceover narration, asides to the camera, and a few winking “Here’s celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain to explain all this CDO business…” detours.  This tells us what we need to know without grinding the movie to a halt.  Our main voiceover man, Big Bank d-bag Jared, acknowledges that even thinking about mortgage bonds probably makes us feel bored or stupid, which is just the way the banks like it.  (I also really like it when the fourth wall is broken to comment on the true-story aspect of the piece – for example, when Jared interrupts an especially-crazy moment to assure us that “that really happened!” or when small-time investors Jamie and Charlie takes some time out to explain that an implausibly-neat transition was in fact fabricated for narrative fluidity.  It reminds me a little of the kind of stuff Tom Stoppard does in a lot of his historical works.)

The acting is fantastic, although given the way the trailer loses its mind over the cast, that’s no surprise.  The standouts are supporting-actor-nominated Christian Bale as the brilliant outside-the-box thinker Michael (I should point out that Michael is an Aspie, and Bale’s depiction of that feels very lived-in and naturalistic) and Steve Carell as Mark, a jaded idealist with anger management issues.  The film also features Brad Pitt and a very funny Ryan Gosling, along with the terrific Hamish Linklater, Max Greenfield (what’s this New Girl you speak of?  he’s still Deputy Leo from Veronica Mars to me,) Melissa Leo, and Karen Gillan.

As great as the movie is, though, it’s kind of a hard one.  Seeing the characters plant the seeds for their future big payoff, you can’t help but remember that they’re banking on the collapse of the housing market and all the turmoil that went with it.  Yes, they’re the underdogs profiting off of the banks’ greed, fraudulence, and outright stupidity, but in the end, we know that the banks got their golden parachutes while millions of people lost their homes, jobs, and/or savings.  The film does address this conflict, but I was still pulled out of it a few times just to feel disgusted at the characters for recognizing such a broken system and only looking to profit from it.

Warnings

Swearing, drinking, sexual content (including strippers,) and general unethical behavior.

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