Margin Call

[ivyfic]

Margin Call is a surprisingly good movie. With it being billed as a thriller, I was expecting someone to get murdered, or have a secret affair, or pull off a daring heist or something. I kept waiting for the melodramatic twist, but there weren't any.

It's just the story of what happens in one night at a bank when someone finally realizes that the formula they've used to calculate risk is fatally flawed and they--and the entire banking system--are about to collapse. You're just watching that piece of information travel through the bank, and the choices people make, and the consequences.

The surprising thing is how non-judgmental it is. It isn't defending bankers or vilifying them. And the opening scene sets you up to feel that certain characters are sleezeballs that turn out to not quite be as unprincipled as you've been trained to think.

A solidly acted, well-put-together film. If you have any interest in the financial crisis, check it out.

(Note: The screenwriter's dad worked for Morgan Stanley for thirty years, and he spoke to many bankers while making the film, but he never worked in banking himself. So it feels very accurate to the corporate culture of a bank, but I don't know if that impression would hold up to a viewer who's in the industry and worked through the crisis.)

Comments

[yourlibrarian]

I haven't seen the film yet but I remember hearing an interview on PBS about the film a few weeks ago. I don't recall hearing the detail about the writer's father's insider status, but it doesn't surprise me. It sounded like a very good film but perhaps somewhat like The Social Network was a good film while still being a particularly slanted story that focused on people rather than an industry. I suspect a lot of it is very accurate but because it focuses so much on individual actions and behavior, but fails to pull back and look at the system as a whole and how it made such an outcome inevitable.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I don't know--it felt very balanced to me. It doesn't let the people who made these choices off the hook about it, or about their decision to choose a career based on money alone. But it does have a great amount of sympathy to the personal dilemma each of them faces when they realize everything they've worked for is a house of cards. You both see people who you thought had no principles sprout them, and people you thought had principles fail them.

Social Network felt a lot more biased to me. But I will not, Margin Call does fail the Bechdel Test. There is one female banker, played by Demi Moore, but she's not exactly sympathetic.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Also, Simon Baker's in this as well and damn, I'm really getting to like that actor. Too bad the show he stars in now is shit. And super succesful. So he's not likely to be in anything else for a while.