"The Big Short"

“Truth is like poetry. And most people fucking hate poetry. – Overheard at a D. C. bar.”

Of all the quotations headlining The Big Short’s segments, this is the only one that was made up for the film by screenwriter/director Adam McKay. Ironically enough, it’s also the only one that describes it with any kind of honesty. Lavishly rewarded by critics and award ceremonies for its provocative wit and financial literacy, The Big Short purports to expose the mechanics of our fraudulent financial system in an entertaining and accessible manner without dumbing anything down; yet for all its cocky bluster and cinematic muscle-flexing, it doesn’t produce a single nugget of truth that couldn’t already be found in the pages of the Wall Street Journal.

Though it may come as a surprise that Paramount would hire the man behind Anchorman: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy to adapt and direct Michael Lewis’s non-fiction account of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, it really shouldn’t. McKay’s brand of uber-ironic, wink-wink-nudge-nudge humour is exactly the kind that’s been dominating Comedy Central and mainstream online outlets for the past decade. It is by no means “bad” humour – insofar as there is such a thing – but it does not apply itself easily to a subject matter as complex and impactful as global economics. Too often, the comedy reduces the topic at hand to a series of compartmentalized facts and emotions that viewers may absorb and digest without having to truly think about their relationship with what these facts and emotions signify.

The Big Short, sadly, only tends to confirm this trend. Through the interconnected paths of misunderstood financial geniuses and outsiders who predicted the crash of the housing market and tried to make money off of it, McKay and co-screenwriter Charles Randolph congratulate their audience for feeling as smart, shrewd and cynical as the characters they project themselves on, moving the pace fast enough so that the inevitable moral “pay-off” registers them as victims of the system rather than the complicit perpetrators they are. Because the audience is too busy chuckling at the zingers, listening to celebrity lectures on economics and nodding at the sly in-jokes (want a crash-course in financial jargon? Here’s Margot Robbie from The Wolf Of Wall Street!), they don’t have time to ponder their own participation in such systems and nothing of any lasting value is truly gained, save perhaps the knowledge of certain facts – but as Werner Herzog once said, “facts do not illuminate; they create norms.”¹

It’s ironic that McKay should use Wolf Of Wall Street as a reference point – not just for the Margot Robbie cameo but for the irreverent, fast-paced, fourth-wall breaking humour – while ostensibly presenting itself as its more overtly critical cousin, and yet prove substantially less informative. As outrageous and profane as their comedy was, Martin Scorsese and Terence Winter never used it to keep the viewer at a safe, comfortable intellectual distance from the plot and characters – on the contrary, they pulled them just close enough for the appeal of easy, immediate pleasure to touch their mind before the next gag pushed them back. McKay and Randolph’s humour is too self-satisfied to ever risk leading the viewer too far from their comfort zone.

This pervasive smugness consistently undermines the tragicomic nature of the enterprise; as in The Revenant, fine acting is wasted by a director who seems more interested in using it for effect than in forging any rapport between character and viewer. No matter how assiduously Christian Bale commits to giving financial whiz Michael Burry a thoughtful and accurate portrayal, McKay rarely sees him as anything more than a Sheldon Cooper clone. Conversely, he embraces Ryan Gosling’s self-consciously amoral trader/audience host Jared Vennett² with no critical distance whatsoever, as if his cool machismo was inherently subversive.
 

Only Steve Carell’s implosive portrayal of troubled hedge fund manager Mark Baum³ fits in harmoniously with McKay’s style and tone. Like an unwitting reservoir for all the frustrations and mistakes borne by Carell’s past comedy protagonist, Baum burns with an unfocused righteous indignation and helplessness that the film seems reluctant to acknowledge as its raison d’être. Carell’s sincerity complements McKay’s irony well enough to offer tantalizing previews of a better-told story.

And yet, despite her role barely amounting to 10 minutes of screen-time, it is Adepero Oduye who leaves the strongest impression of all, as Baum’s long-suffering advisor Kathy Tao. In the virtuosic brew of big names, cutaway jokes, news footage and big names concocted by McKay and editor Hank Corwin, Oduye’s humanity stands out with discreet grace. Her silent response to Baum’s enquiry about the seriousness of his firm’s situation outshines even her distinguished colleagues’ entire performances.

Nothing The Big Short tries to say about Wall Street finance and capitalism matches the eloquence of its unintentional demonstration of infotainment’s appeal and limitations: Visual prowess, self-aware humour and the unquestioned certainty of its target audience’s political virtue may provide satisfactory entertainment on their own, but they do not necessarily create any meaning on their own.

¹http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/interview-with-director-werner-herzog-i-am-clinically-sane-a-677631.html

²Based on real-life trader Greg Lippmann.

³Based on real-life hedge fund manager Steve Eisman.