rage

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2017)

Cinema should inform, entertain, edify, provoke and incite curiosity. The Big Short has it all. It takes material that is difficult - deliberately fabricated to be difficult, as they point out - and makes it easy to understand without condescending to the audience. Having well-known celebrities explain the fraud highly-paid bankers, raters and other morally bankrupt individuals deployed is a marvelous, startling conceit. Breaking the fourth wall to explain what actually happened, and what the filmmakers added for dramatic effect, is simple, elegant and gratifying. Watching this in 2017 gives added hue - as the film presciently states, the poor and immigrants are being blamed for a crisis that a bloated, self-absorbed, callous elite brought down on our heads. And to our shame, we have forgotten, moved on, and seem destined to repeat the same mistakes. Outstanding performances from all the actors, doing an incredible script the service it deserves. Humorous at times, it also strives to be corrosively satirical, and empathetic to the true victims of this narrative. A perfect film, that I will watch again and again.