When Adam McKay’s The Big Short came out in 2015, it was a modest hit, earning a respectable 133 million dollars worldwide (70 million domestically). But for a non-fiction biopic with a large cast, a complicated story-line, and a nerdy subject, the fact that it did even this well seems amazing.
True, the movie had some “A-list” leading men (Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, and Christian Bale), but they functioned as character actors, lost in the ensemble nature of the work, which was itself a complex mélange of styles and concepts. The dialogue riddled with abstruse financial terms like Collateralized Debt Obligation, Credit Default Swap, and International Swaps and Derivatives Association license. So, again, its success seems almost miraculous.
But then again, every great movie, in retrospect, seems like a kind of miracle—a fabulously unlikely combination of talent, inspiration, and sweat. The Big Short is, undoubtedly, a Great Movie. I own a copy of the film and have watched it many times, and each viewing reveals some detail I missed previously. The film is so dense and complicated that I felt the need to write about it.
(more…)
Bakhtin's Cigarettes 