Review of the Film Margin Call
Jul. 1st, 2012 07:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatJust finished watching Margin Call. It's a hot day, so I'm inside reading and watching movies on tv with the A/C blasting. And regarding...Margin Call? Wow. Just Wow.
Margin Call is an independent film about the 2008 financial crisis from the point of few of an investment banking firm, similar to Leheman Brothers, just hours before Black Monday.
This film is possibly the best film that I have seen to date on the 2008 financial crisis or Wall Street period. If you want to understand what happened on Wall Street and the financial crisis? Rent this film. But ignore that...it is also amongst the best films I've seen this year or last year for that matter. Certainly amongst the best written and structured. It was nominated for best screenplay for the Oscars, and won various critical awards. Deserved. The script is the sparse style of David Mamet, and for a while I thought Mamet was the writer. Nope. The writer is J.C. Chandor. It was produced by Zachary Quinto.
The cast? Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey in a room battling each other with nothing but words and their eyes. Rare to have a film that is suspenseful and tight, and has no action, it is all propelled by dialogue. Everything is conveyed through the words the characters use, their body language and shots of the building and the city.
The film takes place over a 36 hour time period within the halls and offices of a top-level investment banking firm. A senior risk analyst portrayed by Zachery Quinto is requested by his former boss, who was just laid-off, to finish project he'd been working prior to being fired and to be careful. What happens next....is a financial horror tale with no blood, no violence, just words.
Nearly flawless, it is admittedly slow to start and took me a while to figure out what was going on. Unlike many movies, this one treats the audience as if they are on the same level plain, and does not dumb things down. We enter the action as if we are investment bankers or literally flies on the wall. The writer doesn't explain things to us. And that is a good and bad thing. Bad in that it takes a little while to catch on, good in that it makes the film more real and valid. If there's a hero or central protagonist, it is Kevin Spacey's Sam Emerson, who is Quinto's bosse's boss. And runs Quinto's department. Spacey is humanized with the mourning of his sick dog, who serves as an apt metaphor for his situation.
Highly recommended.
Margin Call is an independent film about the 2008 financial crisis from the point of few of an investment banking firm, similar to Leheman Brothers, just hours before Black Monday.
This film is possibly the best film that I have seen to date on the 2008 financial crisis or Wall Street period. If you want to understand what happened on Wall Street and the financial crisis? Rent this film. But ignore that...it is also amongst the best films I've seen this year or last year for that matter. Certainly amongst the best written and structured. It was nominated for best screenplay for the Oscars, and won various critical awards. Deserved. The script is the sparse style of David Mamet, and for a while I thought Mamet was the writer. Nope. The writer is J.C. Chandor. It was produced by Zachary Quinto.
The cast? Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey in a room battling each other with nothing but words and their eyes. Rare to have a film that is suspenseful and tight, and has no action, it is all propelled by dialogue. Everything is conveyed through the words the characters use, their body language and shots of the building and the city.
The film takes place over a 36 hour time period within the halls and offices of a top-level investment banking firm. A senior risk analyst portrayed by Zachery Quinto is requested by his former boss, who was just laid-off, to finish project he'd been working prior to being fired and to be careful. What happens next....is a financial horror tale with no blood, no violence, just words.
Nearly flawless, it is admittedly slow to start and took me a while to figure out what was going on. Unlike many movies, this one treats the audience as if they are on the same level plain, and does not dumb things down. We enter the action as if we are investment bankers or literally flies on the wall. The writer doesn't explain things to us. And that is a good and bad thing. Bad in that it takes a little while to catch on, good in that it makes the film more real and valid. If there's a hero or central protagonist, it is Kevin Spacey's Sam Emerson, who is Quinto's bosse's boss. And runs Quinto's department. Spacey is humanized with the mourning of his sick dog, who serves as an apt metaphor for his situation.
Highly recommended.