The beginning of the film takes us back to 2005, when the eccentric Michael Bale discovers that the entire credit system of the state is a bubble that will burst at any moment, he is ready to bet against the system and therefore encounters misunderstanding and ridicule. His big investments against banks come to Jared Veneto (Ryan Gosling), one of the employees of Deutsche Bank who is ready to support his ideas, and one wrong call connects him with Mark Baum (Steve Carell).
Mark is an opportunist who believes in a fair system and runs a small fund within investment bank Morgan Stanley. Although stunned by what he sees, he is ready to make money and after strong checks, he unites with Jared, even though he doesn’t trust him completely. Somewhat later, Charlie Geller (John Magaro) and Jamie Shipley (Finn Wittrock), smaller independent investors, who, with the help of broker Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), also want their share of the cake, also join the story.
With the exception of the character of Michael Barry, who is presented as a true person, most of the more important characters rely closely on other people whose names and certain details have been changed. They are presented as brokers whose profit comes first, although the fact is that not everyone is thrilled that they are making money due to the bad credit system of their own country. That is why there are no heroes in this film in the classical sense, the characters are not additionally made up to please the audience and they are presented as they really are, whether you like them or not.
It is a great success to combine four stories into such a coherent whole with really a lot of dialogue and that is why every part to the authors of the script. This year, Adam McKay, nominated for an Oscar in the category of directing and screenwriting, jumped out of his comfort zone of comedies (Anchorman, The Step Brothers) with this film. He managed to bring the very complicated matter somewhat closer to the average viewer, but due to his constant active work, he is increasingly overwhelmed with new concepts, so that you will literally not know where you are hitting the final third of the film.
The Big Short completely succeeds in its intention to perfectly balance between its difficult subject and active entertainment film. He focuses on people who noticed the problem early and took advantage of the situation. The film is dramatic, but it has comic sequences that break the monotony of economic terms and occasionally (ordinary mortals) incomprehensible dialogues. In addition to the spontaneous comedy of certain characters and numerous ironic comments, scenes with personalities from popular culture are also in charge of humor, which brings the viewers closer to the economic concepts that are being talked about at that moment.
Thanks to the good script, each of the main actors was given enough time to show the character of his characters. The most space was given to Christian Bale, who is usually alone on the screen, and it is generally known how much he worked hard for his role, a well-deserved Oscar nomination. After the movie Foxcatcher, Steve Karel is dealing with a serious character again and it’s nice to see him in something that is not a classic comedy. With this film, Ryan Gosling broke a two-year break without filming, but he is also very charismatic with dyed hair. Brad Pitt is great in the few minutes he’s on screen.
The financial collapse is not the product of an accident, but was caused by very arrogant behavior and loss of control of financiers over the money industry, reckless and superficial assessments of the creditworthiness of the poorer part of the population, as well as lending that led to collapse. Many of us do not understand much about economics, and that is one of the reasons why we have forgotten these unfortunate events so quickly. For that reason, this film is very important, because it refreshes our memory.
The Big Short opens our eyes to the dangers we may face in the future, because we ignore the real problems and repeat the same mistakes. A very good film that obviously tried to bring economic concepts and events related to financial collapse closer to the average viewer, but it still needs prior knowledge to fully understand it.
