Movie intriguingly portrays 2008 crisis
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A scene from “The Big Short” / Courtesy of Lotte Entertainment
By Yun Suh-young
The seriousness of finance, banking, the stock market and Wall Street has held back most directors from making films on such subjects.
But there are brave ones who have tackled the issues. The financial crisis of 2008, which was a cataclysmic event in the world economy, was a ridiculously unexpected incident that involved the ignorance of some and the fraud of others, making it a sexy subject for moviemakers.
"The Big Short," to be released Jan. 21, is, simply put, a story of a couple of ostracized "insiders" of the financial system who bet on the fall of the housing market and make a huge profit out of the catastrophe.
Directed by Adam McKay, who is strong in comedy with the “Anchorman” series and as writer for “Saturday Night Live”, the film tries comically to sublimate the otherwise serious subject. The film is an adaptation of the eponymous nonfiction novel by Michael Lewis, a financial journalist whose former career includes money manager at an investment bank in Wall Street.
The big four financially foresighted protagonists include Dr. Michael Burry (Christian Bale), an antisocial fund manager at Scion Capital, Mark Baum (Steve Carell), an anti-system believer and hedge fund manager, Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a banker who whistle blows the flaws of banks, and Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), a former banker who still has influence in the market and helps rookie moneymakers Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock) and Charlie Geller (John Magaro) bet in the big league.
These four scent the collapse of the housing market and bet against it when everyone believed the market was stable. No one believed them ("Who bets against housing?" people would ask) and investors pulled out from the bonds they ensured would make a profit in the coming years. And this was two to three years before the market showed symptoms of collapse, starting in the second quarter of 2007, as Burry had predicted. "I may have been early but I'm not wrong,” says Burry. “The second quarter of 2007 will see returns.
"Bonds aren't going down. We're in a completely fraudulent system."
It turns out the mortgage bond market was indeed fraudulent and the banks, the government, mortgage sellers, ratings agencies and the media were all riding in the same boat.
The "mortgage backed security (MBS)" was a cause of the financial collapse because the MBS was filled with risky subprime mortgages that were a time bomb. These risky mortgages were bundled together by banks and disguised as safe investment packages called "collateralized debt obligations." Foresighted fund managers made swaps on these mortgage bonds ― "credit default swaps" ― that were insurance on the bonds.
The movie is like a financial education documentary because it is overloaded with jargon. Celebrity cameos from Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain and Selena Gomez randomly appear to explain these terms in plain words and analogies. But as much as they enhance comprehension, they serve as distractions to the flow.
Frantic camera work filled with news clips and photos is also visually fatiguing and the film overall lacks cinematic completeness.
In the end, viewers are left with a heavy head full of confusing terminologies, exasperation toward the entire financial system and bitterness that nothing could be done. Nevertheless, the film successfully alerts, or educates, viewers with a sense of alarm to the world they live in and the discrepancies of the financial world.
Former releases dealing with similar issues include mortgage-crisis drama "99 Homes," the story of the rise and fall of a stock broker in "The Wolf of Wall Street" and an insider's view of an investment bank’s downfall, "Margin Call."