REVIEWS
****
Starring: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt,
Rudy Eisenzopf, Casey Groves, Harold
Gervais, Marisa Tomei
Director: Adam McKay
Screenplay: Charles Randolph and Adams McKay
By Dan Morris
Never have I left film
feeling so angry – yet so
pleased that I now understand what happened
in the 2008 with the crash
of the American housing
market. My repartee at dinner parties with friends will
never be the same again.
And nor will yours.
The sub-title of Michael’s Lewis’s book, on
which the film is based, is
The Doomsday Machine.
Which perfectly captures
the end-of-the-world scenario hideously played out
during the implosion of the
global economy in 2008.
Adam McKay perfectly
captures the self-satisfied,
grossly avaricious world of
Wall Street traders playing
an obscene game of big
bucks roulette, and the
devil take the hindmost.
Until the bubble bursts.
The luminous cast of
bankers, get-rich-quick
investors, unconventional
traders and screwballs, play
out the end of days in 2007,
at a time when the American
financial system seemed invincible, endlessly enriching.
The scramble after
riches blinded the bright-
est and the best to
the looming catastrophe. Few believed
the American housing
market could ever fail –
except those feverishly
bundling up sub-prime
mortgages and selling
them on round the
world, including to
the UK.
Those characters
include Michael Burry
(Christian Bale), a
unconventional trader,
who spots the
elemental flaw
in the housing
market and
bets against it
– the big short
– much to the
annoyance of
his investors.
Then
there’s
Jarred
Vennett
(Ryan
Gosling),
a shamelessly opportunistic
high-flying
Wall Street
trader oozing every
inch what a city slicker
should be. And Mark Baum
(Steve Carell) a man with a
chip on his shoulder and a
desire to screw the bankers.
Also there’s Ben Rickett
(Brad Pitt) a former banker
turned hippy who is holding the hand of two young
investors who get wind of
Bale’s idea, and try to recreate the scheme.
It all reminds you of
Wolf Of Wall Street, but
with fewer hookers and less
cocaine. This is the modern
way of making films about
banking, with all its impenetrable jargon explained
straight to camera.
Much of the dialogue
is crammed with the argot
of money manipulation:
sub-prime mortgages,
collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), Triple-A rated
Bonds, securitization.
But it never puts you off
because the terms, which
may seem alien, are explained using celebrities.
Every complicated piece
of financial jargon, comes
with an interlude in
which the likes
of Selena
Gomez
at a black
jack table
or chef Anthony Bourdain, or fresh
from The Wolf
of Wall Street,
Margot Robbie,
talk direct to
camera to
explain.
The fourth wall is wiped
out in the screenplay by
Charles Randolph and
Adams McKay. And there’s
even walk-on parts as themselves for Tom Cruise &
George W Bush.
And so we fully understand what’s going on and
can see what’s coming down
the track, as inevitably as
night follows day. As Carell’s
character does on a trip to
Miami where he meets
two hot-headed brokers,
who happily admit to selling
mortgages to people they
know won’t be able to repay.
Carell’s assistant asks:
“Why are they confessing?”
To which Carrell replies:
“They aren’t confessing,
they’re bragging.”
Adam McKay’s raucous
comedy, manages the
unlikely feat of being wildly
entertaining about capitalism’s brainless suicide bid
to eat itself. And you come
away feeling the implications are not just hideously
depressing, but damn well
terrifying.
The film does a good job
of making humour out of a
catastrophe that cost people
their jobs, houses, family,
everything, through no fault
of their own.
It will leave you feeling
cheated, and disgusted
that governments and
banks allowed such a thing
to happen. But then, as
the film points out, the
language of high finance
is deliberately obfuscating.
The public aren’t supposed
to understand it.
The irony is that, for a
lot of the time, the bankers
clearly didn’t, either. And
neither did governments.
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