Saw Margin Call last night and really enjoyed it. Gripping opening as the down-sizers otherwise known as HR, turn up to tap people on the shoulder. Perhaps this had more resonance for a Victorian public servant, in the current context, than other audience members. It certainly gave the film a harder edge than it might otherwise have had.
From the start we are into the central theme – can money compensate for everything? In this first instance ruthless personnel practices. We watch the impact of a run of the mill (in the finance industry – as in many others) separation process on a group of employees, the floor, as they watch their colleagues being retrenched. Fear about whether they will be tapped on the shoulder followed by uncertainty about how to behave to the victims. Two, who we are going to get to know better, are told to keep their heads down and avoid the spectacle.
The boss of these two young men is one of those chosen. Nothing personal, no reflection on your work etc. etc. We go through the harrowing process with Eric (Stanley Tucci) in some detail: a polite come with me from Ms (they are, as in real life, mostly women) Junior HR, into a glass office, his embarrassment, then confusion as he tries to interpret the HR speak. Handed glossy documents spruiking the benefits of retirement – a yacht on the cover! One bit of corporate/HR speak by Ms Senior HR needs translation by Ms Junior HR, she’s apologizing for what’s about to happen. Which is Eric being marched out of the building with his box of personal items – 19 years worth. The personal humiliation is underscored when he can’t use his phone once outside the building; his mobile service has been cancelled.
All very brisk and efficient, but personally degrading – of Eric and all those around him, both above and below. So the question is: does the money compensate?
Peter (Zachary Quinto), who has chosen to wish his boss and mentor well (one of the choices talked about below), is given a USB and the message:finish my work and be careful. This he does as his colleagues drink and go about their night time business, which doesn’t involve any family life. Soon they are all back at work dealing with the ramifications of Peter’s work. All through the night. Looking out over the lights of the home of free enterprise and bastion of capitalism, New York City.
Some critics have commented on a lack of tension as the story unfolds and this is true, but not, I think, to the detriment of the film. Which is interested in exploring the effect this world of high finance, and its immanent collapse, has on people, their moral choices and their relationships with each other and, peripherally with their families.
So there is no sense of danger – no need for the be careful part of Eric’s message – to Peter. He finds out the firm is in trouble and passes this on to his boss (Paul Bettany); who takes it up the line (Kevin Spacey); who takes it up the line (Simon Baker); who blames his peer in risk management (Demi Moore) and takes it to the top (Jeremy Irons).
Instead of a corporate thriller with artificially created twists, over the top characters and confected drama, we actually get an authentic representation of what this sort of life entails. People are polite. No-one, least of all Big Boss, shouts. They stab each other in the back in the lift over the head of the cleaning woman (who is invisible to them). Big Boss sacks people with praise about performance and promises of generous pay-outs, but there is steel behind his smile as he refuses to countenance any conversation, let alone any sort of self defence. Concerned that a person won’t comply with a plan being devised, his manager approaches that person’s underling in the car park to suggest betrayal in exchange for advancement. The person having doubts isn’t banging his head against a wall; he’s listening to classical music, falling asleep. Contemplating moral compromise is an internal, and tiring business.
All of this is recognizable corporate behaviour in offices around the world. A nice touch, adding to the authenticity, is the presence of the cleaners. These corporates are trespassing on the cleaners domain as they go about their nocturnal business.
There is a lot of waiting around while other people do things. You don’t see much of the doing. Quick shots of Peter’s computer screen, and people flicking through hastily put together booklet handouts at meetings. People bump into each other, have desultory conversations. There’s little warmth, little mention of family. This is a very competitive environment; and self contained, claustrophobically so, the office is prison-like; a point Peter makes at one stage when he is reluctant to go back inside.
Over and over again the sorts of choices these people make to stay in this world are targeted and exposed. Little choices, big choices – that at the end of day leave them compromised and morally bankrupt – despite all that money.
Eric was an engineer and built a bridge – you wonder whether he should have stuck to that. Peter is trained in some sort of space engineering – a rocket scientist sneers Big Boss – and you wonder whether he would be better off doing that. But as he says; the money here is better. There is a riff on how much money people earn running throughout; initially humorously. Peter’s young colleague, Seth (Pen Badgley), self absorbed (his only question to Erik is will this happen to me?), fearful, is constantly wondering how much people are being paid – the strippers in a club, his colleagues, Big Boss. He passes on rumors about how much this one, or that one earns.
Up on the roof during one of the long waits, this time for Jeremy Iron’s spectacular entrance via helicopter, he cross examines Paul Bettany about his salary and what he spends it on. They are all good at the maths, mentally adding and subtracting numbers. (For someone barely numerate, I noted that.) The question of how much money people earn gets darker. One after another characters line up to say they need the money. It’s never enough. Whether the money is worth the compromises is left open as we watch Demi’s Sarah awaiting her fate looking out over New York; as we we watch Jeremy Irons eating alone doing his crossword, as we watch Kevin Spacey’s, Sam, bury his dog in the yard of his ex- wife.
I am interested in how the audience’s emotions are engaged and am still unsure whose side I was on; what choices I wanted people to make. The firm offer Eric money, a lot of money, to come back. He’s just bought a nice home in a well heeled neighbourhood. Do you want him to refuse? Or do you want him to take the money? Do we want Kevin Spacey’s Sam to say no? Once – about implementing the plan? A second time – about staying with the firm? Do we want Peter to get the hell out of there? Do we want the firm to survive? We know what happens in real life to Lehman Brothers. This humanises the people who were affected in the finance industry. But you see them, and their industry warts and all. But the film considers that too. Is this the evil industry we like to blame for the GFC. What do we think of Jeremy Iron’s rationalisations – boiled down to it has ever been thus – and Paul Bettany’s – boiled down to we fund other people’s greed and they can blame us for their own hypocrisy.
That’s why I liked it. No easy, glib answers. No goodies, no baddies – although Ms Senior HR (Susan Blackwell) goes close! All great performances from a stellar cast. I didn’t know the actors playing the two young men at all. Zachary Quinto has amazing eye-brows. Penn Badgley made an unsympathetic character sympathetic. They were both great. Everyone was. Who hasn’t worked with the Demi Moore’s, Sarah? Groomed to perfection, steely, tough, don’t get in her way! Kevin Spacey was great as the world weary, seen it all, done it all, but can I bear to do it again, character. Within the perfect ensemble, it was Jeremy Iron’s performance in particular that was a tour de force. He had plenty to work with, but his Big Boss was really scary – smooth, wolf-like, capturing people off guard, in their offices, in the toilet; playing on old loyalties, the power of money. Bending his underlings to his will as he does whatever it takes to preserve his firm.
So there you go. Not a nail biter but as a person who works in the industry told us as we walked home last night, a perfectly believable recreation of what was going on at Lehman Brothers on the eve of the GFC, and all the better for that.
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