J.C. Chandor’s Margin
Call, however, is a smart little financial drama that takes place basically
in the 24 hours before the big crash really started. Chandor, the son of a Wall
Street investment banker, and a man who clearly understands a lot more about
financial institutions and brokerage deals than I ever will, has crafted a
screenplay and a film unlike anything I’ve ever seen on similar topics. Your
typical Wall Street drama is so often fast-paced high tension designed to make
what is otherwise cinematically uninteresting material more visually arresting.
Chandor eschews the bells and whistles for a story that is character based.
There are two great accomplishments of Chandor’s
screenplay. First, he has built a story around something very complex, but
written it in a way that is fairly easy to grasp without pandering or relying
on dialogue that feels overtly expository. Second, he has succeeded where most
movies have failed, or failed even to attempt, in crafting a story of terrible
calamity without any obvious villains. There is no hand-wringing CEO
pontificating about how he’s going to make millions while others lose and he
doesn’t care. Every decision that is made by each character is what he thinks
is best for the company. The problem is some people have different ideas of
what that should be.
The film opens with a depressing scene of people getting
fired in a big investment firm. The firm is never named and is ostensibly
fictional so as to avoid any comparison with real-life events. One of those who
is let go is a 19 year veteran of the firm’s Risk Management division named
Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci). He tries a couple of times to tell his superiors
that he’s been working on something important that should be looked at, but
they blow him off: “This isn’t your problem anymore.” So on his way out the
door he gives it to Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), a young hungry analyst who
is a genius at crunching numbers. What he discovers is big enough to call his
ex-boss’s boss, Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) back to the office at 11pm. He in
turn calls his boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) and so on. Before we know it
there is a late night/early morning board room meeting with the CEO John Tuld
(Jeremy Irons).
What Peter discovers is what many of us now know: the
firm had investment holdings that had projected losses worth more than the
value of the company if those holdings lost just 25 percent of their value.
There’s talk here and there throughout the night of, “I warned you about this a
year ago,” but when business is booming and the bonuses are big, who wants to
be the person to stop the gravy train?
The whole plot unravels slowly. It’s one of the most
deliberately slow-burning thrillers I’ve ever seen. It’s interesting that it
was released very close to Tinker Tailor
Soldier Spy, another thriller that is similarly paced. Apart from that
there is so much I admired in it. For one thing there’s Kevin Spacey giving a
signature Spacey performance that outshines most of what he’s one in the last
ten years. His character is a survivor who prides himself on having made it 34
years with the same firm. I especially like how, after half of his department
has been fired, his teary eyes are for his beloved dog that will have to be put
to sleep. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but more about his refusal to accept
reality. The speech he gives to the other ‘survivors’ could have gone down as
one of the great pep talk speeches in a flashier movie.
Paul Bettany is always a fantastic actor and his
character Will is more financially motivated than perhaps Sam is, but Chandor
doesn’t use that against him. He’s more willing to fall into lockstep with what
the firm wants even if it’s against his personal beliefs, but that doesn’t
necessarily make him a bad guy. He’s just someone who wants to keep his job and
move up at the end of the day. I think the character I liked best, though, was
Sarah Robertson (Demi Moore). Sarah is the chief risk officer and has probably
one of the most difficult character introductions imaginable as we first meet
her through the eyes of Eric Dale as he’s just walked out the doors of the firm
forever and discovered they’ve even disconnected his cell phone. He has nothing
for her but a terse expletive. It turns out she’s not a villain either and I
loved that she has no moment of female vulnerability on screen. There’s not
speech about the difficulties of being a woman in a profession dominated by
men. She has a tough and steely demeanor and that’s it. When she’s handed her
fate at the end of the film she takes it in stride without breaking down. It’s
one of Moore’s best performances.
Regardless of who may or may not be morally egregious
based on the events in this film, by the time these actions play out the crisis
could not have been averted. Everything was already in motion to head over the
edge. What the characters at this fictional firm have to decide is what to do about
their worthless investments: hold them and go bankrupt or sell everything off
in a single day which will destroy the reputation of the firm.
This may be one of the best films about Wall Street ever
made because it doesn’t sensationalize that whole thing. At the same time it
doesn’t simplify anything. This financial crisis is the result of failings on a
global scale at almost every human level from investment banking CEOs to
individual homeowners. Margin Call
doesn’t have any interest in throwing blame around and pointing fingers at this
individual or that type of person. You may see Jeremy Irons’ Tuld as a snake.
Certainly Irons brings with him a history of playing those kinds of characters,
but I see him as a man who achieved his position by being shrewd and making
tough decisions that look morally suspect from the outside.
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