Went to see Margin Call
Nov. 23rd, 2011 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerr"There are three ways to make a living in this business:
Be first
Be smarter
or cheat."
I ran across a reference to the movie Margin Call a couple of times in the past few weeks, in the course of my obsessive reading about the Occupy Wall Street protests and the larger issue of how this country got so off track in the financial markets and political process. My interest was piqued by a couple of reviews that singled it out as 'the finest Wall Street movie ever made.'
Well, I haven't seen all the Wall Street movies ever made and so can't judge whether that's true, but I did go see Margin Call last night and found it to be really good. Specifically, it was a well done story that particularly examined a panalopy of characters who come to make dubious, even reprehensible, ethical decisions in the workplace. The writer/first time director, J.C. Chandor does a superb job with a helluva cast. (It must be in the blood: Mr. Chandor's father was with Merrill Lynch for forty years.)
What it particularly reminded me of was the movie that was made from John Dean's book Blind Ambition. (John Dean was Richard Nixon's counsel and was a central player in the Watergate scandal). Dean's book was so memorable, probably the best written of all the players caught up in those events, because it is mercilessly self-analytical. As one reviewer put it, "Rare indeed is a memoir so utterly lacking in self-righteousness, false piety, and special pleading." I vividly remember reading the passage where Dean sits down with his law books and carefully researches how far, exactly, he has broken the law. When he wrote the memoir, he pinpoints the first bad decision he made, a temptation to shade the truth just a little. It happened about a month after he started working at the White House. And when he finally sat down with those law books and faced the truth about what he had been doing, he realized that when he stepped over the line, he didn't even see it, and from there he continued most of the way down to hell. By the time it dawned upon him what he had done, he had long since fashioned the jaws of the trap that was at that very moment closing over his head.
Margin Call is like that. It takes place in a thirty-six hour period, when it dawns upon a young hotshot in the risk department of an brokerage firm (clearly based on Lehman Brothers) that the firm is overleveraged and in serious financial trouble. His boss gets called in, and his boss's boss, and as the question of what to do rises inexorably up the ladder, the dreadful truth becomes clear: they can admit what has happened and in doing so destroy the company--or they can sell these toxic assets, attempting to clear them off the books in one day before everyone else discovers their worthlessness, in an attempt to save themselves. Of course, once they've done so, they'll spread the poison outside the firm, ruining people's lives, and probably destroying the company anyway. Who would ever buy from them again?
One by one, the characters must face up to the ethical decision, and we learn the reasons why they decide the way they do. And in that harrowing thirty-six hours, some realize that the ethical decision was already made, possibly in some cases years ago. And they never even saw it when they first stepped over the line. And just as it's too late to save the firm from the toxic assets, it's too late to turn aside from the path of doom.
Here's the trailer:
Have you seen Margin Call? What did you think?
I think I also want to see the documentary Inside Job.
Be first
Be smarter
or cheat."
I ran across a reference to the movie Margin Call a couple of times in the past few weeks, in the course of my obsessive reading about the Occupy Wall Street protests and the larger issue of how this country got so off track in the financial markets and political process. My interest was piqued by a couple of reviews that singled it out as 'the finest Wall Street movie ever made.'
Well, I haven't seen all the Wall Street movies ever made and so can't judge whether that's true, but I did go see Margin Call last night and found it to be really good. Specifically, it was a well done story that particularly examined a panalopy of characters who come to make dubious, even reprehensible, ethical decisions in the workplace. The writer/first time director, J.C. Chandor does a superb job with a helluva cast. (It must be in the blood: Mr. Chandor's father was with Merrill Lynch for forty years.)
What it particularly reminded me of was the movie that was made from John Dean's book Blind Ambition. (John Dean was Richard Nixon's counsel and was a central player in the Watergate scandal). Dean's book was so memorable, probably the best written of all the players caught up in those events, because it is mercilessly self-analytical. As one reviewer put it, "Rare indeed is a memoir so utterly lacking in self-righteousness, false piety, and special pleading." I vividly remember reading the passage where Dean sits down with his law books and carefully researches how far, exactly, he has broken the law. When he wrote the memoir, he pinpoints the first bad decision he made, a temptation to shade the truth just a little. It happened about a month after he started working at the White House. And when he finally sat down with those law books and faced the truth about what he had been doing, he realized that when he stepped over the line, he didn't even see it, and from there he continued most of the way down to hell. By the time it dawned upon him what he had done, he had long since fashioned the jaws of the trap that was at that very moment closing over his head.
Margin Call is like that. It takes place in a thirty-six hour period, when it dawns upon a young hotshot in the risk department of an brokerage firm (clearly based on Lehman Brothers) that the firm is overleveraged and in serious financial trouble. His boss gets called in, and his boss's boss, and as the question of what to do rises inexorably up the ladder, the dreadful truth becomes clear: they can admit what has happened and in doing so destroy the company--or they can sell these toxic assets, attempting to clear them off the books in one day before everyone else discovers their worthlessness, in an attempt to save themselves. Of course, once they've done so, they'll spread the poison outside the firm, ruining people's lives, and probably destroying the company anyway. Who would ever buy from them again?
One by one, the characters must face up to the ethical decision, and we learn the reasons why they decide the way they do. And in that harrowing thirty-six hours, some realize that the ethical decision was already made, possibly in some cases years ago. And they never even saw it when they first stepped over the line. And just as it's too late to save the firm from the toxic assets, it's too late to turn aside from the path of doom.
Here's the trailer:
Have you seen Margin Call? What did you think?
I think I also want to see the documentary Inside Job.