For anybody that was aware in 2008, The Crash was a scary event. It seemed as though the bottom was dropping out of the US economy, taking the world with it. You might recall that the media talked a lot about things like credit default swaps, collateralized debt obligation and shorting. It described the investment climate that preceded the crash as being not unlike Las Vegas gambling but with billions of dollars. Regulatory officials seemed blind-sided by the complex gambles with mortgage bonds that were being made. All that madness came crashing down when a hiccup in the “real” economy (risky mortgage loans) brought all those gambles to ruin.
The Big Short is what you may consider docu-fiction. It follows three separate groups of investors as they climb the ladder of success for a while and then become the focus of the disintegration. It’s also the story of a government effort to understand and stop this, but it’s too little and too late. It’s the sort of story that might be the topic of a Micheal Moore expose, except that all of this has been out for years and most people still don’t understand it, so something similar is probably happening now. It’s really not unlike a horror movie, except that the monster is not a big reptile or a vampire. In this case, the horror is greed, the kind of stupidity that often afflicts really smart people and the fact that nobody in power could or would be the punitive parent that tells these people to stop what they were doing. A recent estimate put the cost of the bailout at 7 trillion dollars (!!!) and few of the people in this story were ever prosecuted; many are back in the game.
The director of The Big Short is Adam McKay, a guy whose history includes a bunch of comedies, including The Step Brothers and the Anchorman series, nothing that really suggests an inclination to take on a project that involved finding a way to explain and fictionalize such complex financial machinations. Stars include Christian Bale as Micheal Burry, a badly socialized but brilliant manipulator, Steve Carell as Mark Baum, a guy who is perpetually worried about the implications of what he is still doing, Ryan Gosling as Jared Vennett, another of the investors and Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert, an older but not terribly wise investment geek and advisor to some of the young guns.
This is a difficult movie to review. There are 3 separate sets of characters following a converging course and the subject matter (the complex, convoluted investments) is very difficult to explain to someone without an MBA in investment. The drama consists of the fact that the audience already knows the outcome of the movie (The Crash) and has to unscramble how all of these characters will be contributing to it. Detailed attention to the dialog is needed and many people will still come out befuddled. Because we all know the end before the movie begins, even if we don’t understand the money, we do understand that this is going to end very badly and all of these “smartest guy in the room” characters will be a part of this bad ending. Putting all of this into a 2 hour movie makes it verbally dense. Many of the usual aspects of movies (sets, FX, action, cinematography) are mostly irrelevant. Most of the camera work is up-close, with a “you are there”, video quality. The dense dialog and the impending outcome, however, makes Big Short a tense movie and one where you want to stand up and shout to the characters to stop this RIGHT NOW. Fact intrudes on fiction here and makes you realize just how crazy all this really was. You probably need to see it twice to understand it.
My choice for the best performance is Steve Carell. As Mark Baum, he merges a sort of evangelizing moralism with the quality of not being able to stop himself. If his tool was a knife instead of a portfolio, he’d be like a serial killer who feels guilty. Christian Bale also excels as the geeky, uncommunicative guy who speaks in riddles, has bad hygiene, but understands everything. Brad Pitt’s character, is the older guy who should know better, keeps himself somewhat removed from the action, but gives the youngest group of investors enough rope to hang us all and then walks away telling himself that he didn’t do it.
I’m giving this a 4. I think I would have actually preferred it as a mini-series, but it’s a dense 2 hours as it is. The financial manipulations are so complex that more explanation would have helped, in spite of occasional on-screen text messages that defined terms. All of that financial insanity took a while to happen; we would have benefitted from more exposition. Nevertheless, I recommend the movie. It’s the best 2 hour history of these events you will find and, in spite of its complexity, it is suspenseful and keeps you engaged. You are close enough to the actors to catch their sweat as the end approaches so it’s tense in a personal way. I recommend reading something like a Wikipedia article on The Crash before you see it, but don’t miss it.
