What I think about The Big Short

Directed by Adam McKay
Based on the book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
Starring Christian Bale as Dr Michael Burry, Steve Carrell as Mark Baum, Brad Pitt as Ben Rickert, and Ryan Gosling as Jared Vennett
Released in 2015

The Big Short is the mostly factual story of how the 2008 housing crisis came about. I say "mostly factual" because as far as I'm aware the only real person is Dr Michael Burry, though it's to my understanding that everyone else is based on a real person and that the economic plot points are indeed accurate.

The film is extremely dense, featuring six main characters, and three interlinked storylines. And yet, with a runtime of just over 2 hours, the film does not at all feel bloated, nor do any of the characters seem underdeveloped or pointless. It manages this by having text show up on screen explaining things, such as the meaning of a tranche, of a CDO, of an ISDA... and so on. It also has brief interludes featuring celebrities (as themselves) explaining economic principles in lay terms, namely Margot Robbie, Anthony Bourdain, Richard Thaler, and Selena Gomez.

Pub patron [to Ben]: Are you a drug dealer or a banker, 'cos if you're a banker you can fuck right off!

The film's basic theme is deception, and the fact that everyone embroiled in the industry becomes 'corrupted'. Even our primary narrator, Jared Vennett, is screwing over FrontPoint Partners, and receives an enormous sum of money at the end. There are a few people with some kind of moral awareness: FrontPoint have this, though it's driven by hatred of and bitterness at the industry they work in, especially on the part of Baum and Vinnie; Ben Rickert has this, because he has long left banking in favour of a quiet life with his wife; Jamie Shipley and Charlie Geller have this because they are just barely new to the industry, though they still have moments of cold selfishness (for which they are scolded by Ben). Vennett is only involved out of his own self-interest, and Michael Burry, ever the oddball, is actually genuinely concerned with the repercussions.

Ben: If we're right, people lose homes. People lose jobs. People lose retirement savings, people lose pensions. You know what I hate about fucking banking? It reduces people to numbers. Here's a number, every one percent unemployment goes up, 40,000 people die, did you know that?

It's generally not a good thing to have to put in serious effort to understand a film while watching it; there are obviously exceptions to this, but it more often than not indicates that a film is confusing rather than intricate. And yet, The Big Short's somewhat scatterbrained feel kind of works. Especially considering the subject matter, and the actual purpose of the film: to educate people on what really happened through entertainment. Even with all the efforts taken to mitigate this; having loose 'chapters' and explanatory notes on screen, as well as the celebrity interludes, the film still requires active deduction and your brain (well, mine at least) is near-constantly playing catch up. And if you 'get it', great, you learned something. And if you don't, you get to watch it again, and that's certainly no punishment.

By the way, quick note on the 'education through entertainment' point. There are a few points in the film where this is acknowledged, such as when Brownfield Capital are applying for their ISDA and they find Vennett's prospectus in the lobby. They both address the camera, saying that in reality they both heard about it differently, but that this way is more dramatic. This is flipped later on, when Baum yells at a speaker at a conference, and Vennett turns to the camera to confirm, somewhat in disbelief, that yes, that really happened.

Onscreen text: Trying to be a high-stakes trader without an ISDA is like trying to win the Indy 500 riding a llama.

The film's coy facade of humour experiences several cracks towards the end; Ben Rickert's sobering chiding of Charlie and Jamie (quoted above); the futility of Charlie Geller warning his mother about "the end of capitalism"; Mark Baum's discussion with a CDO manager, which itself features increasingly loud sporadic background laughter in response to the disturbing revelations leading up to Mark's realisation that the fraud will collapse the entire world economy. The Big Short, after spending two hours exploring the events leading up to the crisis in a comedic documentary style, takes a sharp nosedive in tone and ends on a sombre, bleak note. First with Mark Baum's phone call to Vinnie, then Jared Vennett's 'gotcha!' final speech, and lastly with the subsequent events in plain writing. I guess if you're bored by economics don't watch this. Or do. Maybe it'll change your point of view. In any case I'm giving it a solid 8/10 and recommending it to pretty much anybody else.