Adam McKay really did that-of course, to be exact, The Big Short should be regarded as dramady (comedy drama). Adam McKay is a comedy director, famous for cooperating with Will Ferrell, and has directed Anchorman, The Other Guys, etc. His interest in the 07-08 financial crisis has a long history. In The Other Guys in 2010, he criticized the 08 financial crisis in the form of animation at the end of the film.
How to make the 07-08 financial crisis a relatively boring topic from the perspective of drama, on the premise of being faithful to reality, and shooting interestingly, Adam McKay thought of several tricks:
First, speed up the movie through the lens and editing. Due to the short perspective of this movie, the timeline of the entire film is locked, so it is impossible to narrow the field of vision to the moment before the pressure cooker explosion like Margin Call and Too Big to Fail in the same financial crisis. , So as to obtain natural drama and excitement. Adam McKay's solution is to use the general handheld photography and unstable composition of the Jason Bourne series, use extremely fast editing, and use network meme-like collages to artificially speed up the movie. Editing is not only fast, but also often unexpectedly processed, just like splitting in music, which makes some scenes come to an abrupt end at unexpected moments.
The second is to explain the plot and financial terminology by frequently breaking the fourth wall and singularly inserted celebrity guest appearances in various positions. It cannot be denied that the origin of the 07-08 economic crisis is quite incomprehensible to non-financial audiences. When I went to Securities Regulation in the second year of law school, in order to learn the In re Countrywide case, the teacher spent half a class teaching us financial illiterate about CDO and CDS, but we were still confused until the end of the class. It is conceivable that this movie faced such a difficult challenge in explaining the plot. Adam McKay's method is to use Ryan Gosling's role as a guide, and ask him to directly face the camera to speak to the audience from time to time, explaining what is happening. If this is not enough, then let him act like a host and ask a celebrity you unexpectedly unexpectedly to show you what it is. The style of the cameo bridge segment is more showy: Margot Robbie in the bath, Anthony Bourdain (a famous chef/CNN host) in the cooking, Selena Gomez (girl singer/Ding Xian's girlfriend) in the gambling card, Richard Thaler (University of Chicago) Economist) duo. Because of their intuitiveness, these bridge segments are quite effective in explaining financial terminology.
The third is in-situ self-deconstruction. Due to the seriousness and authenticity of the theme, Adam McKay can no longer play the funny style he likes to use based on the weird plot, so he is postmodern, and the opposite is coming: acting, acting, characters Breaking the fourth wall abruptly, he said to the camera, "In fact, the real situation is not like this, how we are in real life, but the director changed it to this for the sake of the drama." It's a bit interesting to shoot mainstream comedies like this. The bad guys in the play are innovating financially, and the directors outside the play are innovating comedy.
These tricks are successful, coupled with Adam McKay's usual sneer-like lines, this movie, which is not a spoof comedy, is very entertaining. Of course, the opposing side's point of view would say that this is all gimmicks, but considering that this is a comedy in the final analysis, not "War and Peace", for comedy, "gimmicks", isn't it a real gimmick?
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The main weakness of this movie is the characterization. The setting of the three groups of men and horses does not seem to have obvious theatrical significance, but it has led to a slightly thin characterization. These three groups are all shorts. The difference lies in their size and origin, so they are superimposed together, not the effect of 1+1+1=3. Due to the three lines, two hours are spread evenly on everyone's head, resulting in the whole film not having enough time to develop each character. However, the performance of the actors is relatively good, to a large extent, to a large extent, to make up for the obstacles brought by the structure of the film to the extent they can. Generally speaking, although the characterization has not reached the ideal level, it does not affect the film to become a good film.
The character of Christian Bale, what we see is a socially disabled person full of anger but unable to speak, full of words but unable to speak. How do we know? He said it himself in the movie. Why does he have social barriers? Because he has only one eye, childhood shadows-it took a minute to act at the beginning of the movie. That's it. The rest of the time was his symptoms and stress. To be precise, he was in the office, depressed, ignoring emails, and being scolded. Apart from listening to death metal, does he have an amateur life? There is only one scene where he is outside the office in the whole film, and he beats the drums with an angry face at home for less than a minute. Does he have a home? There are indirect performances but no direct performances. Although the director finally tried to use this family as the character's emotional core, the intention was not successful: because honesty made him succeed in picking up girls, he was honest for the rest of his life? The same goes for Brad Pitt's character. You know his situation because the narrator told you so. Besides, the whole film didn't use any pen and ink to explore why this person is so paranoid and suspicious. And their moral standards, to some extent, are like duckweed on the water-if you don't believe that human nature is good.
The most successful portrayed in this play is the character of Steve Carell. His feelings, his situation, his moral beliefs, you can understand and you will believe. Steve Carell's character has a complete character arc, from moral conviction, to hesitation, to some kind of epiphany or letting go. It's a pity that Marisa Tomei's role was not fully utilized in the play. Considering their rivals in Crazy, Stupid, and Love, it was quite funny.
However, the biggest highlight of this play is the duo of the Dwarf Garage Fund. The roles of these two people are not particularly large, but the film has completely shaped the transformation process for them than for Steve Carell's characters: from humbleness and hesitation, to pride and ecstasy, from literal gloating to misfortune, to morality. I am ignorant, and then panic about the disaster, and finally stand on the ruins and think.
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Are there any good people in the market? Is there more kind greed? These characters ask themselves this at the end. It is often said that the 07-08 financial crisis was the gambling of Wall Street that made the whole society pay for it-to a large extent, Adam McKay's narrative was also attributed to this routine. However, the root cause of the crisis, subprime mortgages, is "inferior" because the buyers of houses do not have the ability to bear variable interest rates. Affordable house. Is this gambling really just for Wall Street? Is this greed really just the banker's?
Don't hate the player, hate the game.
Michael Burry (the person played by Christian Bale) in real life was interviewed on December 28th. He said this:
"So few took responsibility for having any part in it, and the reason is simple: All these people found others to blame, and to that extent, an unhelpful narrative was created. Whether it's the one percent or hedge funds or Wall Street, I do not think society is well served by failing to encourage every last American to look within. This crisis truly took a village, and most of the villagers themselves are not without some personal responsibility for the circumstances in which they found themselves. We should be teaching our kids to be better citizens through personal responsibility, not by the example of blame."
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