THE BIG SHORT: Bubble Trouble

Director: Adam McKay
Writers: Adam McKay, Charles Randolph
Cast: Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt
Runtime: 130 mins.
2015

I've invented an adage. It goes like this: I don't care what a movie is about.

That's not to say content isn't important. I also don't mean to imply that I don't have preferences. If someone were to ask me to choose between a movie about a high concept sci-fi adventure and a story about the trials and tribulations of ballerinas, given only that information I would pick the former. And yet, there are very few high concept sci-fi adventures that I prefer over Black Swan. The lesson I've learned over time is to never dismiss a movie based on its subject matter. If I've heard good things about a movie from trusted resources, or if I trust the people who worked on it, I will see it regardless of the subject matter, even if the subject matter is of no interest to me. The great thing about great movies is that they will make you interested in their subject matter.

The Big Short is about the housing bubble, and subsequent financial crisis, that crippled the American (and world) economy in 2007. More specifically, it is about the men who predicted, and thereby profited from, that very crisis. Some of the best jokes in the movie are about the disconnect between the moviegoing audience and the topic. Ryan Gosling plays Jared Vennett, our narrator, who tries to guide us through the narrative while acknowledging the eye-glazing dullness of the subject matter. Not only that, but the sheer boring factor of banking and finance is integral to the plot and themes of The Big Short. How did nobody see the housing crisis coming? They were too disinterested to look.


If you're thinking a crisis that brought about the loss of countless jobs, livelihoods, and even lives is too grave a matter to joke about, you're absolutely wrong. The best satirical works of art hit us hard where we hurt. They make us laugh at our greatest failings. Dr. Strangelove takes the piss out of World War II, our great modern tragedy. 50/50 takes on cancer. A Serious Man makes light of the fundamental meaninglessness of life. These movies show us the abyss, and the abyss is ridiculous. They waffle between the relief of laughter and the sinking feeling of despair. They are some of our most crucial stories--stories that admit the despair of living while helping us not succumb to that despair.

The Big Short struts into this canon with panache. The movie adheres to an event film structure, where the protagonist is less an individual and more a wide-ranging cultural occurrence. Characters swerve in and out of the limelight, and their development hinges upon that central Event. The lead-up to the crisis is hilarious. McKay injects the film with a manic energy, splicing in almost subliminal images of Americana in between scenes: an image of South Park, a taxi, somebody ordering a drink, some birds. Many of these are jokes, but they also set a tone of irreverence--not only on the part of the filmmaker, but on the part of the American public. Life was good for Wall Street bankers and the ordinary people who lived off of their lies and ignorance; when the crisis hits, the film yanks the rug out from under us and these carefree images are twisted into memento mori for the death of innocence.

The narrative is powerful, but it is made more so by the characters. It would have been so easy for McKay to revile these greedy men, the immoral bastards who profited from a national tragedy. Instead, the movie gives us sympathetic human beings, men whose only crime is premonition. With the exception of Gosling's narrator/character, everyone is given pathos and backstory. Christian Bale plays a socially abhorrent misfit with a glass eye and a head for numbers whose childhood was spent suffering the scorn of others. Brad Pitt plays a softhearted cynic who became so disgusted with Wall Street that he quit the game years ago. Steve Carell plays a stickler for good behavior whose ethical bent comes from the tragic death of his brother. Carell functions as the primary emotional core of this film, and even among this star-studded cast his dramatic scenes outshine everyone else's. He has spent a number of years trying to grow out of his persona as the obnoxious comedy guy, and this movie absolutely seals his legitimacy in my eyes.

Even more impressive is Adam McKay's coming out party. You certainly know his work: Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, The Other Guys. Dumb goofy Will Ferrell comedies with variable quality (Step Brothers is great, I could take or leave The Other Guys, and I couldn't get through much of Talladega Nights). He forever cemented himself as a comedy director worth looking out for with the incomparable Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, but in recent years it was beginning to seem like he and Ferrell had settled into a somewhat stagnant pattern. In an alternate reality, McKay would have been the one at the helm of this season's tepidly received Ferrell and Wahlberg vehicle, Daddy's Home. Instead McKay wrote and directed this daring comic masterpiece about banking, a topical fascination of McKay's that had butted itself into some of his other writing, but never to this extent. The Big Short feels like an entirely different beast than the Ferrell gross-out weird-out movies. McKay finds a perfect middle ground of more restraint than typical for a comedy, and more flavor than typical for an awards season nonfictional drama. Between the liminal images, the brilliant needle drops, and the intimate character work, The Big Short comes out far shinier than could have been expected. Apparently McKay just needed the right material for another breakout film, and he found it thanks to Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, Moneyball, The Blind Side, etc.

I walked out of this film profoundly affected by the capitalist acid that is eating through our nation's digestive system. Lines from the movie stuck with me to the point of almost making me sick. It's that poignant. Luckily, unlike many poignant things, it's also a hell of a lot of fun to watch.

4 / 5  BLOBS