Film No. 16 (2016) The Big Short. February 25th.

Film No. 16 (2016) February 25th.  6.30 PM GREATER UNION Innaloo.

 

"Banks have conditioned us to trust them. What have we got from that? 25% interest rates on credit cards. They have screwed us on student loans we can never get out from under". Mark Baum (Steve Carell) outlines the state of play with regard to the U.S. financial landscape).

Everyone in the world was affected in some way or another by the  Global Financial Crisis stemming from the fraudulent banking methods which took place in the U.S. leading up to the "bubble bursting" in mid 2007. The Big Short sets out, in the simplest terms it can muster, to try to explain why and how this happened. I'm a little the wiser but I'm still mulling over the facts portrayed in varying terms on screen.

 

The poster for The Big Short and the preamble prior to the film's release gave me a false sense of how it may play out. I was looking to see 4 big stars (Bale, Carell, Gosling and Pitt)combining to  bring the banks of the day down because they could see a housing bubble occurring based on a banking system lending money to people who in some cases didn't even have an income. In some ways this is what I got but the intertwining method director Andrew McKay (Anchorman) used to filter the information through each of the characters made for a more exciting experience.

 

The fact is, The Big Short is based on real life characters who did  make big money from their knowledge. How do they make big money from a crisis of epidemic proportions? Well that is all in the title. Short selling is a method of making money in a falling market. For the method to be successful, the players need to have good research and possess great courage. The film does a great job of building tension via all of the players and their varying temperaments. Christian Bale's Michael Burry is brilliant as the autistic genius who takes his financial employer to the brink. Burry lights the fuse from which the rest of the script sizzles.

 

The Big Short is chock full of facts about a time we are still paying for. If some of those facts are still unknown to you then The Big Short may help you to better understand a system so corrupt and ultimately unjust it will make your blood boil. Carell's Mark Baum keeps us morally grounded throughout. The Big Short is an important story well told; it has a couple of Oscar nominations but maybe that is where it will come up short. Bale may surprise however. 9GUMS.