A complete crash course

Makes me think about GME. Good times.

Interesting movie, I learned a lot and actors explaining stuff for the audience was a fun way to deal with difficult terms.

When I wrote my thoughts on Spotlight, I speculated about how knowing the end of the story going in, knowing the extent of the scandal the team in Spotlight was uncovering, may have robbed the plot of some of its punch. And yet, The Big Short is, in many ways, the perfect counter to that. Almost everyone old enough to watch this film lived through The Great Recession. They know that the disaster all the main characters in the film are predicting comes true, in all its horrible, self-destructive glory. But rather than taking away from the film, it adds to it. There's this sense of foreboding, of doom that hangs over everything. A film about the financial crisis, especially involving traders and analysts and people crunching numbers in a fund, could easily be too dry. And yet, the fact that the individuals the film focuses on are slowly but surely investigating an economic massacre waiting to happen, and how each step they take reveals another way that disaster might have been diverted, or people who are supposedly in the know digging the whole deeper, means that the entire film is just an exercise in creating that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach. It's not a prestige picture; it's a horror film. It's also a very weird film. It's not so bold in its presentation that it feels unprecedented, but it feels stitched together, disjointed, and unusual, but in a good way. Adam McKay, of Anchorman fame, is the right man for the job. There is a darkly funny absurdity to the topic The Big Short covers, and with his fourth-wall breaking asides, his cuts to celebrity explanations of complex financial consequences in ridiculous situations, and his jumping between various characters acting wild or nutty lends the perfect tone to the movie, one of simultaneous horror at what hell hath been wrought and unavoidable bemusement at the clowns who steered us all into this ditch. The direction and rhythm of the film is frenetic. It's closest comparison point is Requiem For a Dream with the same frenetic hodgepodge of images and sounds, bleeding and blending into one another, disorienting the viewer and conveying the sense in which the financial world the film depicts is intoxicating, dizzying, and unsettled all at the same time. Another aspect of the film that makes it hard to compare to other works in this space is the fact that it doesn't really have a protagonist or a plot. Sure, it has a story, and it has characters who take up the most oxygen over the course of the movie, but more than anything it feels like a documentary. It's far too stylized and irreverent to really deserve that label, but it's far more interested in trying to describe what happened, to explain just what mistakes and lies and blindspots led to the global economic crisis, than it is in rising action and resolution, or showing people growing or changing. That's not to say there isn't an emotional element to the film. Steve Carell stands out by playing essentially a smarter, angrier Michael Scott who grabs your attention every time he's on screen. The parallels between his character's sense that a catastrophe is looming in economic terms that he could do something to prevent, and his guilt over not doing more to prevent his brother's suicide was--while perhaps a little easy--also affecting. The rest of the cast do their jobs well, but blend together a bit because again, while they're a vital part of the film, the film isn't really about them. The characters in The Big Short are conduits to detail, in amusing and human terms, just what the hell went wrong. Christian Bale is a collection of actorly tics, but he acquits himself well enough. Ryan Gosling does his best dudebro douchebag type, and is sufficiently entertaining in that guise. And Brad Pitt seems pretty reserved, short of his moment where he chastises his young wards for being too happy about what they're making their money from. But again, the fact that there's not really a narrative means that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The film is not really a story; it's an autopsy, cutting up the corpse of our financial system and exposing the bloody innards, the rotten organs at the core that led the USA, and the world, to the dire economic state it was in by late 2008. In that sense, the film succeeds wildly, and McKay manages to tackle something of real significance without losing the absurd madcap attitude he brings to his comedic works, and somehow, doing justice to the insanity of the lead up to The Great Recession in the process. It's a hell of an achievement to make a film this funny, this disturbing, and this great.

my brain hurts

I refuse to believe that the bean counters at Scion Capital would let IT set all their computer workstations to "never sleep" the display. Think of all the electric bill inflation! What's really great about all the Dell workstations scattered through the film is that I have either used or currently own nearly all of the peripherals shown on screen. (That probably just reveals how dated some of my hardware is, to be honest…) Now, with that out of the way… I liked the tone of this documedy (if that wasn't a word yet, it is now). The mix of comedy and obvious dramatization (even pointing out the fictitious bits at points), the tongue-in-cheek hiring of celebrities to explain the "dry" bits—all of it…except the music. On several occasions, the choice of music just didn't make any sense. I get that the film was going for loud, in-your-face, even obnoxious, but it just didn't work sometimes. It felt like trying to force a laugh at the juxtaposition of music with scene, and seemed half-baked. The characters didn't really stand out much from each other. With the exception of Mark Baum, all of the bankers were interchangeable more-or-less white guys, both in appearance and in personality. Ben Rickert was more of a caricature than a character, hardly possessed of any depth. Not that I expected depth in a movie of this sort…but it's still disappointing. It's 100% possible to have both deep characters and good comedy, but _The Big Short_ delivered (mostly) flat characters and (generally) passable comedy. 7.3 seems about right, since I did laugh a solid few times and learned some stuff. (7.4 if I were feeling generous, but I'm not.)

The technical stuff is very wonderfully explained, it's complex and I had to read it twice in order to properly understand, and although the film is a little bit hard to follow at times it's absolutely wonderful, the cast is great and the story keeps you hooked. Overall a great movie with a wonderful pacing that keeps the viewer interested all throughout the movie, and the final reflection really does leave you thinking about what sort of world we're living in..

I still don't get who wants to buy their shorts when the economy is in the brink of a collapse, what a bailout is, the ending remarks where no one wants to interview michael burry about how he knew all these years prior (implying fraud/corruption in the gov?). I'm super ignorant of all these but this movie really sparks the curiosity out of me and I really like it. Even with a limited knowledge of bond and short I could enjoy this movie. Some clarifying questions to AI and I think I understand a lot of the movie now (https://aistudio.google.com/app/prompts/1rx7EF24i9Tn0BYcWxx6onSk4yNqk0ZeL) Also the acting and the direction in this movie is so good, they use The Office-like direction, love it.

👽👽