There was this campaign carried out [in 1994](https://web.archive.org/web/19961031232918/http://media.circus.com/~no_dhmo/) on the dangers of [dihydrogen monoxide](https://en.uncyclopedia.co/wiki/Dihydrogen_monoxide) (DHMO). The author alerted of its rusting, corrosive, and acidic properties. He urged people to support the bill for outlawing it.

The baffling name of DHMO actually stands for water. This faux petition tested how gullible were the masses to being tricked into supporting something they do not comprehend.

Suppose you wish to explain to these laymen how the big men at the Wall Street make their buck, when they've so conveniently obscured their word by complex jargon and abbreviations?

One way is to dispose of the majority of the technical terms and tell an overtly simplified  process, which requires skills to not mislead.

Or the person can be overloaded with technical terms and expected to be enough to understand. All that's going to do is tune them out.

The other option, is to distill the terms into understandable real-life examples. Coupled that with a plot, they can get invested in, hard to understand concepts become characters and plot details. This can be done by having the the characters seek a goal in the process, converse other how the economy everything works, which would teach the audience about it. You can come to such a point, where everything in the plot is just technical deep-dive and still have the audience on roll. If [Christopher Nolan]() can just have a movie filled to the brim of exposition in *[Inception](/reviews/inception_intention_is_to_expose_exposition)*, then 'tis possible to do it for a finance film.

Precisely this challenge is taken up in [Adam McKay]()'s 2015 film *[The Big Short](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Short_(film))*. I applaud the director and the screenwriter [Charles Randolph]() for making a film that's both thrilling and accurate to minutae of finance. But I have qualms with it.

And here I do not mean the fact they portray the [2008 financial crisis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_financial_crisis) inaccurately, since art is about sacrifice. Historical accuracy in an art film is not an expectation, to a certain degree. No one watches *[Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln:_Vampire_Hunter)* and actually believes Lincoln fought a vampire lord on top of a burning steam locomotive. Yet, they expect Lincoln to be opposed to the Confederates. So there is this trust that's built between the author and the audience.

Having trust is especially hard to do when the movie is politically driven. Those with opposing ideologies to what the film preaches, are less likely to agree to a mutual contract between the director and themselves, resulting in them blocking anything the movie is asserting or claiming. This requires the maestro behind the film, to somehow manage the opposing mentality. 

For a film released less than a decade after the highly political '08 crash, the confrontation is unavoidable.

In such a time-span, the event is still an open wound, therefor, it has the attention of the audience. The director would do something similar, although by coincidence, when making *[Don't Look up](/reviews/don_t_look_up_2021_is_melancholia__but_a_comedy)*, where a pre-appocalypse film release coincides with the Corona pandemic.

So, you have this serious exploitation film, dealing with a hard to grasp topic by a comedy director. Welp, that seems like a recipe for disaster.

The movie overcomes the enigma of finance by having well known stars break the 4th wall and just tell you what each cryptic term means. There you have Margot Robbie in a bath detailing how [mortgage-backed securities]() work, which is not too out of order for someone who played a major role in *[The Wolf of Wall Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wolf_of_Wall_Street_(2013_film))*.

![Chilling in the tub, sipping wine and explaining the economic concepts](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/3LXQGNLVKMHCCXHQ.jpg)
*Chilling in the tub, sipping wine and explaining the economic concepts.*

But the director is not satisfied with one star talking about how money works, there you have the world renowned chef [Anthony Bourdain]() explaining [CDOs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation), there's the pop star [Selena Gomez] with a Nobel winning economist [Richard H. Thaler]() going over [synthetic CDOs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_CDO).

It's not enough to break the 4th wall, the director needs to smash it. Characters time to time turn back to us and explain the reality of events. Sprinkling in the humor, to otherwise, quite a grim picture. Coupled that with the narration by the protagonist Michael Burry ([Christian Bale]()), there is this overwhelming sense of self-awareness. What I would call a disturbing blend of *[Deadpool](/reviews/superman_2025_has_not_enough_hawkgirl)* with *[FightClub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight_Club)*, or *[Taxi Driver](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_Driver)*.

The delirious mixture is further mixed with a documentary style, making the film seem more grounded. Which is further reinforced with cuts to what appears to be stock footage and photos. The uneven and jagged camera movement by [Barry Ackroyd]() sells the movie as a documentary, which presents itself quite proudly as one.

The director is not poor when it comes to creating conflict. When people scream and shout, the camera shakes more fervently. There are cuts back and forth between different scenes, each mirroring the action going on in the previous one. 

The director uses comparison cuts in other cases, for instance, in the second half of the film, the groups of characters we've been following all this time, leave the same building. And we see their reaction of how they  are feeling about the situation, we see the type of cars they get into, we see who they are in juxtaposition of others. All in swift cuts, never staying too long.

Sometimes, there are cuts before the word is fully said, creating this uncomfortable feeling, making you feel like you've been robbed. A rightful comparison could be made to [Lars von Trier](). This is some good film-making. Still, I'm second guessing myself on whether it is a conscious idea to cut off before the word is fully complete, not allowing the viewers to fully understand what is said.

For all this realness, I still cannot easily take in the films groundless due to the big name celebrity and 4th wall breaks. They just rub off me the wrong way. That's complicated further by the film being unapologetically political. Hell, the underdog characters of Charlie Geller ([John Magaro]()) and Jamie Shipley ([Finn Wittrock]()) shoot at [Osama bin Laden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osama_bin_Laden) and proudly proclaim how great it is to shoot terrorists.

This sense of justice over a rotten system is most blatant in the Jewish Mark Baum, played by [Steve Carell](). Who is so rabbinical, that he sees hidden intentions in every action, in every step of the investors. Hell, the entire financial sector is filled with Jews, because it is a system that's basically built for applying [mental gymnastics](/articles/How_Much_Money_Am_I_Losing). The movie invites the audience to be Jewish, to search for gold in a factory of bullshit. And it does so by dethroning an already disrespected industry.

![It's the reason Mark is studying so hard. / He's looking for inconsistencies in the word of God!](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/XSKASM1JW0UQCEUI.jpg)
*It's the reason Mark is studying so hard. / He's looking for inconsistencies in the word of God!*

Which begs me to ask, is there some hidden intent behind the film? Is it just plain, *Wall Street is bad, don't trust it*. After all, [Occupy Wall Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupy_Wall_Street) movement had run its course by early 2012. The people on the street showed how much worth they saw in the banking and financial institutions. And the film echoed their dissenting voices.

![Trust is improving, but for how long?](/pictures/user_upload/Troler/PNYLCF9CCOPLBLF9.png)
*Trust is improving, but for how long?*

What I said is misleading. It is obscuring not the way the financial terms are, rather it misses out on the big point, the finale. In the end, everyone who bet against the **U.S. government** got filthy rich. Those who ruined the economy got off all fine, but the lower class got punished. Millions lost theirs jobs and even more their homes.

The big loss is further strengthened by having the family from the middle of the film, be on the move. We see the empty offices. 

But the entire built up basically asserted that whoever shows the middle finger to the system and abuses it to their hearts content, get off winning the jackpot. Even though Mark Baum proclaims that *...for 15,000 years fraud and short-sighted thinking have never, ever worked*, it shows otherwise. The real winners were those who cashed out early.

If you look for inconsistencies in the word of *God*, you'll find *Go*l*d*.

*Fin.*