Who is on the margins?

In the last year, the total in my superannuation has decreased by $10,000, despite the fact that both myself and my employer regularly make deposits. It’s a bit disheartening. I’m looking forward to my gruel-led retirement. It’s probably due to the Greek debt crisis or the volatility on Wall Street or to something happening in one of Alan Kohler’s little graphs.  I write this in the context of having seen the film Margin Call on the weekend.  In the style of a thriller, it follows the events over 24 hours in the life of a large Wall Street trading firm. Their whizz kid rocket scientist (literally) discovers that they are way over-exposed on some assets that are dodgy. (Think back to the sub-prime mortgages that almost brought down most of the financial system in 2007/08). 

The film takes place almost entirely in the plush office block which houses this firm. Our exposure to the outside world is predominantly sexy New York at night – again and again we are treated the views of the Manhattan skyline. Therein lies my problem with this much acclaimed film. The inhabitants live in a bubble. An expensive bubble. They operate with NO reference to the ordinary world and the impact of their actions on my superannuation account. It lacks a moral perspective – and while this is related to the point the film is making, that the protagonists lack a moral centre – the concept of morality is only discussed in relation to their trading relationships. What will happen if they adopt a particular course of action – will anyone ever do business with them again? This is the only concern expressed by any of the participants.

I expect that the film maker thought that people would apply their own knowledge of the global financial meltdown and the wider context. I’m not sure that this is good enough. The Time Out reviewer said it well:

”Missing, however, are the outsider eye and moral perspective of, for example, John Lanchester’s writing about the crisis. 'Margin Call’ presents Wall Street on its own terms even in meltdown – not uncritically but claustrophobically, like a Mob movie indifferent to victims of crime. It’s unclear whether the picture realises how bitter a taste this leaves.”

I loved that metaphor of The Mob film, though even in The Sopranos, a narrative layer deals with Tony’s grumbling conscience via the psychotherapist’s chair. This film uses the device of a dying dog as a humanising plot feature but it doesn’t give the Kevin Spacey character a lot to work with. Phillippa Hawker picks up the same issue, that of morality, but has a different view of it:

“The film takes place within a bubble; we have to contemplate the consequences of the company's actions for ourselves - and that's actually the most unnerving aspect of all.”

What we now know though, post GFC, is that this unethical and greedy sector has the world by the balls and they will be bailed out again and again because they are too big to fail. I loved The Big Short, a book about the GFC by Michael Lewis, because of the slow burn of anger and because of the breadth of it. This film is a bit too much in love with the accoutrements of power and influence. The scenes of New York, the smooth silent expensive offices and cars, the fact that no one has a rumpled suit or shirt, even at 5 in the morning. Maybe I wanted at least one person to talk about the roll-on effect – for the average punter, for the global markets, for Greek pensioners and battlers in Detroit and Jill Wilson’s superannuation fund…