‘The Big Short’ sheds light on the big financial crisis of 2007
Many of this year’s best picture nominations for the 88th annual Academy Awards are based on true events.
“Spotlight” captures the Boston Globe’s investigation into a conspiracy involving Catholic priests molesting young boys; “The Revenant” recounts the story of a man who was left for dead after a gruesome bear attack; “Bridge of Spies” takes a look at real-life events that took place at the height of the Cold War; and finally, “The Big Short” dives into the financial crisis that happened in 2008.
As an avid movie lover, anytime I watch a movie that is supposedly based on a true story, I always find myself searching the Internet for hours comparing how accurate the movie was to the truth. I know not every detail can be the same, however, I do expect the main plot points to match.
Walking in to see “The Big Short,” I didn’t know what to expect. The director, Adam McKay, is not known for biopics. “Anchorman,” “Talladega Nights” and “Step Brothers” are the movies you think of when you hear McKay’s name. A movie taking on the seriousness of the stock market crash and the government bailouts did not seem to fit with McKay’s comfort zone; however, I think his comedy background gave the film the comedic relief it needed.
This film zeros in on the housing market rise in the mid 2000s, and how home loans with no money up front were given out like candy. What these people didn’t realize was that the mortgage loans that they were given were bad and being combined with others to create one big great looking one. After the market crashed in 2007, these people were forced to move out of their new homes and were told by the banks that their loan was no longer good.
The film is based on Michael Lewis’ nonfiction book, “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine,” which focuses on some of the key people who saw the financial crisis coming before it hit and were able to benefit from it.
Although the film concentrates on the same characters in the book, most of the names have been changed. The only character name not changed is Michael Burry, played by Christian Bale. Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling and Brad Pitt round out the cast who benefited from the crash. McKay made sure that Burry’s character was portrayed exactly how he was in real life: introverted, blind in one eye and was known to pace in his office barefoot blaring heavy metal music.
Not straying away from his comedy background, McKay brings in some big names–Anthony Bourdain, Margot Robbie–to dumb down some marketing vocabulary, making this film informative and enjoyable.
You can see “The Big Short” on campus Saturday, Feb. 27 at 7 p.m. as part of the Film and Speaker Series at UHCL.
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