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The future is decided in metal and glass skyscrapers, and it's determined by those employees in suits, ties, and light shirts who are icons of lacquered, speculative, and cynical finance. The symbol of our times, the troops that decide who, how, and when will win. The criminal underworld (because that is what it is) of "trading" is the setting that J. C. Chandor explores with his gaze in the first feature film of his career.
The white-collar workers who can do everything also get fired sometimes. That's how it is and how it must be. Eric (Stanley Tucci) is kicked out without notice. He has to leave his office and his computers. Gone is also his cellphone and email. From being one of the big movers to finding himself in a corner, it’s a short step. Not before passing onto his colleague Peter (Zachary Quinto) a USB stick with a side of "be careful." Because before being fired, Eric had foreseen the abyss they themselves had created.
Behind "Margin Call" lies the significant subprime crisis that devastated America since 2008, with J.P. Morgan Bank at the forefront, the same that pours millions of dollars into consultant Tony Blair, the "third way" and wars in Iraq just because. It's complicated to unravel the financial framework Chandor tells us about in its phase of collapse, also because the screenplay is often cryptic, a problem shared by "A Most Violent Year," his latest film. What emerges is the similarity between the intricate complexity of the theme and the directorial setup: the filmmaker constructs a film almost entirely within interiors, where the choice of shots and cinematography (Frank DeMarco) have the rare ability to make every single cramped office space, where the story unfolds, feel claustrophobic and alienating. As if these great and opportunistic manipulators are themselves trapped by the alienating scenario of sterile and anonymous rooms.
The "magnum" theme of finance has always fascinated and found space in the cinematic world, especially in Hollywood. For this reason, "Margin Call" has various references that are readily detectable, albeit with due differences. "Margin Call" is not Oliver Stone's "Wall Street," where social climbing and the desire to elevate one's status were the driving force of the story. In Chandor's work, the theme of ascent takes a backseat, in favor of a screenplay intersection that places the various characters before the morality of their choices. But they are the ones who never lose money... those who, with two clicks, decide the future of hundreds of thousands of shareholders and various buyers. In the ambiguities of writing, in rhythms that stretch to ruin in the second half, in the almost theatrical simplicity of the film, "Margin Call" has all its strong and weak points. Chandor anticipates here what he will do in the future: his is a work of "subtraction", of details that say but do not complete, of few characters ("All is lost") and circumscribed environments. His humanity is enclosed in positions and places it cannot escape. Because Chandor’s is a cinema of solitude and fear. And if one can get help from people like Kevin Spacey, Demi Moore, and Jeremy Irons, all the better.
"There are three ways to make it in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat."
7.5
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