The Ultimate Side Bet

Rating: 8/10 (20 March 2016)

I can only imagine there will be two emotions after watching The Big Short, confusion or anger. Confusion is natural; there is an enormous amount of information about an intentionally murky system. The financial structure that led to the housing collapse and largest recession since The Great Depression has enough information to fill a library. This is no exaggeration. The sheer scale of data, cause, effect and global impact could take lifetimes to truly understand. What The Big Short succeeds at more than anything else is dumbing it all down in a way that makes you angry at the system for needing it dumbed down. If this world, which all of our well-beings are slave to, were easily understood than there would be no story for the handful of people who saw the collapse coming. What makes these people special is a mix of in-the-know brilliance, and a pessimism that requires a dark capitulation of the finish line.
Christian Bale plays Michael Burry, an investor on the spectrum who clues into a default trend for sub-standard housing loans Had I not just seen the movie, this sentence would have been nearly meaningless to me. What is important is that this story is not about protagonists who are clamoring to prevent a crisis. These are self- interested people who may lament the collateral damage of the impending hell, but at least know how to hedge bets so they won't be in its path. Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Bale, Brad Pitt, John Magaro, and Finn Wittrock are only half the players portrayed in this high stakes game of Jenga. They are somewhere between the victims of the general populous and the perpetrators that obliviously helped move pieces into the decaying structure. They are not around to elicit our sympathies; they are there to court us through this quagmire of jargon and elicit emotions on our own behalf. Stands a good reason why I was so engaged and furious by the end of it.
The end-game for these characters is to bet against the housing market; the largest medium of investment in our country. When the bubble bursts, the side bet they made on it pays out with outstanding odds. Because we live in the future to these events, we know from the beginning that this is a sound business strategy if not just making lemonade. What their personal stories reveal is just how corrupted the system really is. Even with all of their foresight, these characters wait unreasonably long for the truth to come out. This is due to a national evasion working against any prevention by not recognizing the wound until the body is already bled out. It's the difference between seeing your guilty child next to a cup of spilled milk and that child distracting you at the door while the carton is still spilling in the kitchen. If there is redemption for these characters, it's how little they gain from their fortunes. The realization that the humanitarian cost for their monetary prosperity is too high to celebrate. These subtle character pivots are the endearing entertainment to an enraging story.
If you knew anything about Adam McKay prior to this movie, about the only thing you were thinking during the pre-view was "where's Will Farrell?" When so much of McKay's previous work was hinged on improv comedy, it was enthralling to see that he helped pull off an Oscar- worthy screenplay. The comedic notes throughout The Big Short made this upsetting story easier to take. Were this a documentary, it would have been equally as informative, but less engaging because of the unrelenting waves of infuriating facts. With a very talented cast, these characters unburden us by feeling so much on our behalf. Steve Carell is especially fun to watch as he maintains a constant anger that mirrors our own. The entertainment factor is probably little consolation for the thousands of home buyers in 2006 who look on thinking "Great, now I know specifically how I got screwed."