Margin Call has something very scary to say.
Through the dark and dreary chaos that unfolds throughout the night at Jeremy Irons' investment bank, an unsettling realization comes rising to the surface. Put simply, the movie makes us blatantly aware that the country's financial system is too complicated for just about any man or woman to navigate while claiming to possess a true understanding of what he or she is doing. What a harrowing thought.
To see that moral and compassionate men, such as Kevin Spacey's character, and greedy, ruthless men like the one Irons plays, can be equally powerless to fend off disaster when the going gets tough is frightening. It literally took a rocket scientist (played by Zachary Quinto) to put all the pieces together and sound the alarm; alas, it was already about two weeks too late. And the man (Stanley Tucci) whose work set him on the course to the big discovery? He was terminated while some of his younger coworkers got to stick around to count their bonuses. What a tragic mess.
More than for any other reason, this movie plays out as a thriller because nobody is ever fully in charge. Irons' John Tuld might sit in the chair at the head of the dreary board room table, but he's just as desperate and unsure of himself as the sheep he's been naively leading to slaughter. Really makes you worry about the country's biggest real life corporations. Have some of our banks gotten so big that they've become impossible to manage?
-Brian Seliber
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