An Archetypal Black Comedy

Rating: 9/10 (30 January 2016)

Adam McKay's adaptation of Michael Lewis' very readable recounting of the financial meltdown in 2007-8 hews closely enough to Lewis' book, but the spirit here is more manic and hysterical and the dour worldview that Lewis infuses in his work is amplified, focusing on the dire effects the meltdown had on the average citizen--there's a despair here that makes this an archetypal black comedy. McKay and his co-scenarist Charles Randolph change the names of some of Lewis' oddball personalities and some of their motivations, the most notable being Ryan Gosling's jaded, arrogant Jared Vennett, based on the book's bond salesman Greg Lippmann, a minor but important character, who here serves as the narrator best suited to the cynicism the film stews in. McKay serves up his story with all the cinematic tricks he can find, with lots of freeze frames, blackouts, whizzing cameras, newsreel footage (the frenetically entertaining editing by Hank Corwin helps tremendously), characters breaking down the fourth wall to address the audience and real-life celebrities brought in to explain some of the more complicated points of the sordid financial products being marketed. But he hits his comedic marks most of the time and when the film needs to emphasize the tragic nature of the crisis, the shift is effectively jarring. The powerhouse cast (in addition to Gosling, there's Christian Bale, Steve Carrell and Brad Pitt) is uniformly excellent--Pitt, as a reluctant colleague to two young bumbling novice investors, is often hilarious--but it's Carrell's troubled investor, here known as Mark Baum, who really shines: with a delicate commitment in his eyes, Baum sees beyond the immediacy of the debacle into the soul-sucking Wall Street machine and agonizes over its effect on modern society. Thanks to McKay's pointed anger you feel Carrell's realizations and sense of resignation on a more cerebral level uncommon in most modern performances and it helps the film achieve an unusual power. Recommended.