Margin Call

The residue of a significant cultural and social event almost always includes some cinematic response: in the past five years alone, we’ve seen takes on September 11th and the War in Iraq in the forms of United 93 and The Hurt Locker, respectively. As far as the most recent housing crisis goes, Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps, Too Big to Fail and now Margin Call have all stepped in with reenactment and commentary.

Of the three, critics have already labelled Margin Call as the best, and David Denby of the New Yorker went so far as to deem it “easily the best Wall Street movie ever made” (although, given predecessors like Boiler Room, that’s not saying much). What separates it from the usual fear-and-greed formula of other films about finance is that the investment banking backdrop is just that: a backdrop. The usage of technical jargon is kept to an appreciable minimum; the obligatory depictions of strippers and mentions of cocaine are underplayed; and the power-hungry CEO lynchpin character (Jeremy Irons) takes a backseat to junior decision-makers. The strength of Margin Call, like any good drama, is that the crisis it depicts serves as a means for furthering its characters, and not the other way around.

And its characters, for another thing, are varied, from the 23-year-old analyst unable to see past his impending unemployment (Penn Badgley) to a conflicted head of trading dogged by misgivings about corporate Darwinism (Kevin Spacey). Margin Call, in the spectrum of its characters’ reactions to the unfolding crisis, explores the ways in which position and rank within the firm mandate values. The film doesn’t critique a CEO for his callousness as much as it observes that such a job demands it.

Unfortunately, not even the “best Wall Street movie ever made” can avoid nodding its head to a populist audience. It’s admittedly easy to see why, as the current state of economic outrage is the reason for the script’s existence and green-lighting. Paradoxically, however, the moments of Margin Call that most directly resonate with the populist sentiment of Occupy are also its worst. In more than one unnecessary taxicab scene, inserted just to pass the time between points A and B, the very value and existence of the banking industry itself is cheaply brought into question. These attacks always come in the form of melodramatic character confessions that feel contrived, and add little to the plot, less to the characters and nothing to the film.

In the end, Margin Call probably is the best Wall Street movie ever made. But, then again, even basement-level tranches of subprime mortgages can pass for Triple-A these days.