‘The Big Short’, on financial crisis, fans Oscar buzz for Carell

LOS ANGELES: With big-name stars and early Oscar buzz over Steve Carell’s performance as a banker confl icted about the global fi nancial meltdown, “The Big Short” is generating both hype and mixed reviews.

The fi lm closed this week’s AFI Fest in Los Angeles, a festival that often plays a crucial role in shaping the intense competition for Oscar’s coveted golden statuettes.

The subject of the fi lm, which was screened late on Thursday, is not the easiest: making sense of the complex fi nancial roots of the 2007-2008 debacle that saw stock markets and big fi nancial institutions teetering near collapse.

But “The Big Short,” a Brad Pitt production, deploys its considerable star power — including Pitt, Christian Bale and Ryan Gosling — to untangle the crisis through the skilful telling of very human stories.

Carell, nominated for a best actor Oscar for his haunting portrayal of deranged millionaire John DuPont in the 2014 fi lm “Foxcatcher,” plays the part of a clear- eyed but depressive banker, one of the few to suffer guilt pangs as the fi nancial catastrophe unfolded, costing millions of Americans their jobs, savings or homes.

The crisis has already spawned several fi lms, including “Margin Call,” depicting the failure of a bank seemingly modelled after Lehman Brothers, “99 Homes,” on the evictions following the subprime mortgage crisis, and “Inside Job,” which won the 2011 Oscar as best documentary fi lm.

“The Big Short,” adapted from the book of the same name by the fi nancial writer Michael Lewis, adopts a tragicomic tone in describing how a real estate bubble in the United States — the famous subprime crisis — led to the near collapse of the global fi nancial system.

The fi lm, set for a Dec 23 release in the United States, uses humour and clear language to explain the obscure jargon of bankers and fi nanciers, like the fi lm’s title, which comes from the expression “to short sell” — essentially, to profit through a bet that a share price will decline.

The fi lm turns to the young Australian actress Margot Robbie, nude in a bubble bath, to explain that “subprime” means a loan to a borrower with poor or non- existent credit.

“When you hear ‘subprime,’ think s***,” she says.

The chef, food writer and TV personality Anthony Bourdain explains that a CDO, or Collateralised Debt Obligation, allows holders to fob off risky home loans on inattentive investors, much in the way a restaurant recycles less-thanfresh fi sh in a stew.

“It’s not old fi sh anymore,” he says. “It becomes a whole new dish.”

The fi lm is well- stocked with satirical characterisations: Bale plays the part of Michael Burry, the real-life American manager of the hedge fund Scion Capital, who was one of the fi rst to recognise the looming disaster ... and who profited from it.

Gosling plays the arrogant and venal manager of another hedge fund, while Pitt plays a savvy but sombre investor.

Other characters include a unscrupulous pair who brag about giving loans to illiterate immigrants with poor credit; and an erotomaniac employee of the Security and Exchange Commission, the American agency overseeing stock trading, who is obsessed with landing a job in an investment bank.

The Hollywood Reporter called the fi lm “wearisome” and “far overlong,” while Variety says that it turned “a dense economics lecture into a hypercaffeinated postmodern farce.”

But the Oscar prediction site Goldderby.com puts Carell among the 10 actors most likely to win the acting award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and it places the fi lm in the top 15.

Oscar nominations are to be announced in mid- January, and the ceremony is set for Feb 28. — AFP