Movie Review
Margin Call (2011)
NYT Critics' Pick
Zachary Quinto and Penn Badgley in "Margin Call."
Number Crunching at the Apocalypse
By A. O. SCOTT
There have been reports of hurt feelings among the bankers and brokers who have been the focus of public ire and Occupy Wall Street protests. And it is true that those poor, hard-working souls have been demonized and caricatured. Surely the much-reviled 1 percent does not consist of plutocrats in top hats or predators in blue suits, but of human beings just like the other 99 percent of us, albeit with more money and perhaps more to answer for.
Demi Moore and Simon Baker in “Margin Call.”
That, in a way, is the message of J. C. Chandor’s “Margin Call,” which does a great deal to humanize the authors — and beneficiaries — of the 2008 financial crisis. But the film, relentless in its honesty and shrewd in its insights and techniques, is unlikely to soothe the wounded pride of the actual or aspiring ruling class. It is a tale of greed, vanity, myopia and expediency that is all the more damning for its refusal to moralize.
There are no hissable villains here, no operatic speeches condemning or celebrating greed. Just a bunch of guys (and one woman, Demi Moore) in well-tailored clothes and a state of quiet panic trying to save themselves from a global catastrophe of their own making. Watching them going about their business, you don’t feel the kind of fury inspired by “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s great muckraking documentary on the origins of the financial crisis, but rather a mix of dread, disgust, pity and confusion.
And also, above all, admiration for an extraordinary feat of filmmaking. It is hard to believe that “Margin Call” is Mr. Chandor’s first feature. His formal command — his ability to imply far more than he shows or says and to orchestrate a large, complex drama out of whispers, glances and snippets of jargon — is downright awe inspiring. The movie rarely leaves the Manhattan offices of the fictional investment bank (loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers) in which it takes place and limits its action, which consists mainly of phone calls and hurried meetings, to a frenzied 24-hour period. Within that narrow frame the gears of a complex narrative mesh with ravishing clockwork precision.
“Margin Call” is a thriller, moving through ambient shadows to the anxious tempo of Nathan Larson’s hushed, anxious score. It is also a horror movie, with disaster lurking like an unseen demon outside the skyscraper windows and behind the computer screens. It is also a workplace comedy of sorts. The crackling, syncopated dialogue and the plot, full of reversals and double crosses, owe an obvious debt to David Mamet’s profane fables of deal-making machismo. Hovering over all of it is the dark romance of capital: the elegance of numbers; the kinkiness of money; the deep, rotten, erotic allure of power.
If no one in this world is patently evil, no one is innocent either. A young risk analyst named Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) may be as close as the movie comes to a hero, but it is also possible to see what happens to him as a parable of how the system corrupts and exploits its most decent and honest minions. Working late one night Peter (who we later learn has a Ph.D. in physics) glimpses a sign of the apocalypse lurking in a mathematical model. Recent volatility in the market is threatening the stability of the mortgage-based securities that have been generating most of the company’s profits, and the resulting losses are likely to swallow this bank and make trillions of dollars vanish into thin air.
Which pretty much happened of course. The task Mr. Chandor sets himself is not to explain, once again, what occurred in 2008 — though a comparison with the journalistic records suggests that “Margin Call” is broadly accurate — but rather to explore the psychological pressures and ethical choices at work among those who caught an early glimpse of the abyss and then helped push everyone else into it.
Peter alerts his callow co-worker Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) and their immediate superior, Will Emerson, a cynical soldier played by Paul Bettany. In a gangster movie Will would be the midlevel enforcer, entrusted with the dirty work but denied real authority. His superior is Sam Rogers, played by a splendidly world-weary Kevin Spacey. Sam oversees the sales force that has been peddling the bad securities, and he must now carry the bad news upstairs, through several more layers of company hierarchy.
There is a tense showdown with Sarah Robertson (Ms. Moore), who seems to have promoted the scheme that is now unraveling and who may have ignored warnings about its outcome. Eventually word of what Peter has learned reaches John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), the charming, dapper, black-hearted boss of bosses, who arrives by helicopter in the dead of night, like a vampire summoned from the crypt.
One of the running jokes of Mr. Chandor’s script is that the higher a person’s rank, the less he is likely to understand what the firm is actually doing. This ignorance is almost a point of pride. “I don’t get any of this stuff” — this line is repeated about Peter’s discovery by Will, then Sam, then Sam’s boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) and then Tuld. In a further absurdity, one person who does get it, Peter’s mentor, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) has just been downsized out of the company. As a security measure his cellphone has been disconnected, which means that his increasingly desperate former colleagues are unable to find him when he might be of most use.
Not that anything can really be done. The most chilling and most believable aspect of “Margin Call” is how calmly and swiftly its drama of damage control unfolds. A scapegoat must be found, and a survival plan worked out. The consequences are acknowledged — those we are living with now — and then coldly accepted in the name of a vaporous greater good. “We have no choice.” “There is no choice.” “It’s not like we have a choice.” These phrases are uttered again and again, by people who truly believe what they are saying. Some of them may have sleepless nights ahead, but none are likely to suffer very terribly. The accomplishment of this movie is that it allows you to sympathize with them, to acknowledge the reality of their predicament, without letting them off the hook or forgetting the damage they did.
“Margin Call” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Obscene language and obscene sums of money.
MARGIN CALL
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Written and directed by J. C. Chandor; director of photography, Frank DeMarco; edited by Pete Beaudreau; music by Nathan Larson; production design by John Paino; costumes by Caroline Duncan; produced by Joe Jenckes, Michael Benaroya, Robert Odgen Barnum, Neal Dodson, Corey Moosa and Zachary Quinto; released by Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions and Benaroya Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
WITH: Kevin Spacey (Sam Rogers), Paul Bettany (Will Emerson), Jeremy Irons (John Tuld), Zachary Quinto (Peter Sullivan), Penn Badgley (Seth Bregman), Simon Baker (Jared Cohen), Demi Moore (Sarah Robertson) and Stanley Tucci (Eric Dale).
There are no hissable villains here, no operatic speeches condemning or celebrating greed. Just a bunch of guys (and one woman, Demi Moore) in well-tailored clothes and a state of quiet panic trying to save themselves from a global catastrophe of their own making. Watching them going about their business, you don’t feel the kind of fury inspired by “Inside Job,” Charles Ferguson’s great muckraking documentary on the origins of the financial crisis, but rather a mix of dread, disgust, pity and confusion.
And also, above all, admiration for an extraordinary feat of filmmaking. It is hard to believe that “Margin Call” is Mr. Chandor’s first feature. His formal command — his ability to imply far more than he shows or says and to orchestrate a large, complex drama out of whispers, glances and snippets of jargon — is downright awe inspiring. The movie rarely leaves the Manhattan offices of the fictional investment bank (loosely modeled on Lehman Brothers) in which it takes place and limits its action, which consists mainly of phone calls and hurried meetings, to a frenzied 24-hour period. Within that narrow frame the gears of a complex narrative mesh with ravishing clockwork precision.
“Margin Call” is a thriller, moving through ambient shadows to the anxious tempo of Nathan Larson’s hushed, anxious score. It is also a horror movie, with disaster lurking like an unseen demon outside the skyscraper windows and behind the computer screens. It is also a workplace comedy of sorts. The crackling, syncopated dialogue and the plot, full of reversals and double crosses, owe an obvious debt to David Mamet’s profane fables of deal-making machismo. Hovering over all of it is the dark romance of capital: the elegance of numbers; the kinkiness of money; the deep, rotten, erotic allure of power.
If no one in this world is patently evil, no one is innocent either. A young risk analyst named Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) may be as close as the movie comes to a hero, but it is also possible to see what happens to him as a parable of how the system corrupts and exploits its most decent and honest minions. Working late one night Peter (who we later learn has a Ph.D. in physics) glimpses a sign of the apocalypse lurking in a mathematical model. Recent volatility in the market is threatening the stability of the mortgage-based securities that have been generating most of the company’s profits, and the resulting losses are likely to swallow this bank and make trillions of dollars vanish into thin air.
Which pretty much happened of course. The task Mr. Chandor sets himself is not to explain, once again, what occurred in 2008 — though a comparison with the journalistic records suggests that “Margin Call” is broadly accurate — but rather to explore the psychological pressures and ethical choices at work among those who caught an early glimpse of the abyss and then helped push everyone else into it.
Peter alerts his callow co-worker Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley) and their immediate superior, Will Emerson, a cynical soldier played by Paul Bettany. In a gangster movie Will would be the midlevel enforcer, entrusted with the dirty work but denied real authority. His superior is Sam Rogers, played by a splendidly world-weary Kevin Spacey. Sam oversees the sales force that has been peddling the bad securities, and he must now carry the bad news upstairs, through several more layers of company hierarchy.
There is a tense showdown with Sarah Robertson (Ms. Moore), who seems to have promoted the scheme that is now unraveling and who may have ignored warnings about its outcome. Eventually word of what Peter has learned reaches John Tuld (Jeremy Irons), the charming, dapper, black-hearted boss of bosses, who arrives by helicopter in the dead of night, like a vampire summoned from the crypt.
One of the running jokes of Mr. Chandor’s script is that the higher a person’s rank, the less he is likely to understand what the firm is actually doing. This ignorance is almost a point of pride. “I don’t get any of this stuff” — this line is repeated about Peter’s discovery by Will, then Sam, then Sam’s boss, Jared Cohen (Simon Baker) and then Tuld. In a further absurdity, one person who does get it, Peter’s mentor, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci) has just been downsized out of the company. As a security measure his cellphone has been disconnected, which means that his increasingly desperate former colleagues are unable to find him when he might be of most use.
Not that anything can really be done. The most chilling and most believable aspect of “Margin Call” is how calmly and swiftly its drama of damage control unfolds. A scapegoat must be found, and a survival plan worked out. The consequences are acknowledged — those we are living with now — and then coldly accepted in the name of a vaporous greater good. “We have no choice.” “There is no choice.” “It’s not like we have a choice.” These phrases are uttered again and again, by people who truly believe what they are saying. Some of them may have sleepless nights ahead, but none are likely to suffer very terribly. The accomplishment of this movie is that it allows you to sympathize with them, to acknowledge the reality of their predicament, without letting them off the hook or forgetting the damage they did.
“Margin Call” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Obscene language and obscene sums of money.
MARGIN CALL
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Written and directed by J. C. Chandor; director of photography, Frank DeMarco; edited by Pete Beaudreau; music by Nathan Larson; production design by John Paino; costumes by Caroline Duncan; produced by Joe Jenckes, Michael Benaroya, Robert Odgen Barnum, Neal Dodson, Corey Moosa and Zachary Quinto; released by Lionsgate, Roadside Attractions and Benaroya Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.
WITH: Kevin Spacey (Sam Rogers), Paul Bettany (Will Emerson), Jeremy Irons (John Tuld), Zachary Quinto (Peter Sullivan), Penn Badgley (Seth Bregman), Simon Baker (Jared Cohen), Demi Moore (Sarah Robertson) and Stanley Tucci (Eric Dale).
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