Adam McKay is a genius

Rating: 9/10 (7 January 2016)

Six men saw what no one else did. The Big Short manages to balance three stories and weave them together seamlessly, without any feeling of its characters being undercooked or overindulged. Paul Haggis meets Aaron Sorkin, and in my opinion, The Big Short's screenplay is better than the one Sorkin actually wrote this year.
McKay and Randolph take complex economic concepts and explain them to us with both humour and gravity. The random "here's X to explain it to you" scenes are utterly brilliant and work extremely well as a break from the frenetic film and as a quick lesson in an important scene. Throughout the film, people use complex language and then another character follows up with "so you mean like this?" Its not forced because that's how people actually talk. The third wall breaks are hilarious and charming and entertain whilst also instructing us. Even when the real life story is changed to make the movie work better, characters acknowledge the change to the audience. It shouldn't work, but my god it DOES. The result is a highly interactive film that makes learning fun! The story takes huge sweeping ramifications and represents them to us with powerful scenes - take Burry's mentor demanding his money back to represent the many people who would have felt that way in real life. One man and his kids is powerful enough to convey to us the dire situations of soon to be millions of Americans. A pretty young compliance woman tells her ex-boyfriend's brother "we don't do much because our funding got cut", which is representative of so many overseers who got lazy. But even more impressive is the humour, which never suffers at the expense of the drama or vice- versa. Never going for cheap laughs, McKay instead constructs scenes that are hilarious by their very premise. Something about Carrell and a stripper discussing sub-prime mortgages during a lap dance is way funnier than anything that happened in Ted 2. Recurring jokes about one of Carrell's co-workers who always likes food and Jarred's vanity have their place and never dominate importance scenes. The screenplay is likely second only to Spotlight's this year, and only by a hair.
Beside the economic concepts, we have a story about very different people, and the two who are treated with utmost respect and depth are Burry (Bale) and Baum (Carell). Bale completely vanishes into yet another chameleonic performance, the one-eyed, Aspergers, quiet genius. It is unfathomable that this is the same man who played Bruce Wayne and Patrick Bateman. You can see plainly written across Bale's face the remnants of a childhood marred by his disfigurement. When he says he cannot deliver compliments properly and then demonstrates, it is extremely uncomfortable. The look on his face as a group of people whisper together while he sits alone speaks volumes. Steve Carell goes back to back with his absolutely brilliant performance in Foxcatcher last year to portray Mark Baum, an raging, depressive shatterpoint of a man whose sheer disgust at the broken system is the highlight of the movie. We find ourselves tensing up for one of his outbursts just as his on-screen friends are. Ryan Gosling is flawlessly cast as the vain, pretty boy Jarred Vennett, Brad Pitt has a grave and dignified role to play as Ben Rickert and of the extended extra cast, Jeremy Strong stands out as a great foil to Carell. Its unfortunate to see Marisa Tomei and Melissa Leo completely wasted in tiny roles.
McKay's direction is without a doubt some of the finest of 2015. His choices are utterly brilliant. He introduces Bale's character as a loner by splicing him swimming (the ultimate solo sport) with him messing up team sports as a kid. He introduces Carell's character as a raging loudmouth by having him barge into a therapy session and speak over everyone, only to storm out at the first distraction. He establishes the suicide of Baum's brother brilliantly in a two second scene that speaks volumes. Throughout the film, his use of visual aids (dictionary definitions, quotes), fast cuts of people shouting, lingering takes on email inboxes and steady takes of empty trading rooms are all hole-in-one choices. While people are on the phone to people off-screen, he flashes a picture of them so we remember who it is. McKay is the master of context-building.
The end of The Big Short is grave, almost horrifying. Brad Pitt nails a short monologue about what his young companions are celebrating and the mood shifts very suddenly. The final text reads almost like 12 Years A Slave in terms of the injustice you feel. A true story hasn't affected me in this way for quite a long time.