![]() And as I have learned the hard way, after forcing various friends and loved ones to watch it with me, Margin Call is not for everyone. This does not sound like the most riveting of material. ![]() The rest of the film chronicles their attempt to come to terms with it all. Portrayed with remarkable charisma and menace by Jeremy Irons, Tuld decides how to deal with the toxic assets, which he describes as “the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of capitalism.” His decision is astonishing, and his colleagues immediately realize what it means. Sullivan freaks out and tells his boss, Will Emerson (a wonderfully sardonic Paul Bettany), who freaks out and tells his boss, Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who grudgingly tells his much-younger boss Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), who finally calls in the firm’s CEO John Tuld for a 4 am meeting. His last words, as the elevator closes, are “be careful.” It doesn’t take long for Sullivan to dive into Dale’s spreadsheet and realize that if the firm’s mortgage-backed investments fall in value by even a modest amount, it could bankrupt the company. Before leaving the building, Dale tosses a flash drive to his protégé, the erstwhile rocket scientist Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto). Conditions are rough from the start the film begins with Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), the head of risk management at the firm, getting booted in the latest round of layoffs. In case you aren’t already a diehard Marginalist: Margin Call chronicles a day in the life of an investment bank at the outset of the financial crisis of 2008. ![]() Some introductory Margin notes Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto), an associate in the Risk Assessment and Management Office, and junior analyst Seth Bregman (Penn Badgley), really didn’t know what they were getting into. It wasn’t brains that brought me here,” to be funny, or you don’t.īut to a large degree, my love for Margin Call boils down to it being the one film that, more than any other, seems to understand the modern workplace (or at least the office workplace), and the moral compromises involved in living and thriving in that world. At some level, either you find Jeremy Irons telling Quinto to “speak as you might to a young child. There are certainly aspects of my love for Margin Call that are similarly difficult to put into words. Around the moment that Quinto takes out his headphones and realizes the bank where he works is in desperate, desperate trouble, it clicked for me.ĭeadheads sometimes talk about the “X factor”: the indescribable aspect of a performance that elevates it to a higher level. ![]() This must be the Deadheads’ struggle: confusion and frustration that the whole world hasn’t fallen as rapturously in love with the art they love so much. Most people don’t get the obsessive, fanatical love I have for it. Everyone thinks this movie is a fairly routine, not particularly notable drama. I feel about Margin Call the way Deadheads feel about the Dead. But why did a band so average-seeming, so unexceptional to me, inspire such a dedicated fanbase? Why would people follow them around, spending thousands of dollars producing and trading bootlegs of their favorite live sets? Cherry Garcia is an okay ice cream flavor. I was of course familiar with the Dead I grew up across the river from Vermont. ![]() I think it was on my third or fourth viewing of Margin Call, the 2011 corporate thriller starring Zachary Quinto and Jeremy Irons, that I realized I finally understood Grateful Dead fans. ![]()
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