Several years ago I decided to spend money and time only on four-star movies. That is why, over Christmas, I made a point of getting Greg and myself off to see Margin Call and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy — each having received the requisite number of stars by reviewers in the Globe and Mail.
The former, directed by J.C. Chandor , is about the imminent collapse of an investment firm (loosely modeled after Lehman Brothers, according to Wikipedia) in 2008. The latter, directed by Tomas Alfredson, is based on John Le Carre’s 1974 novel about cold war espionage. Both directors are relative unknowns, and yet both have constructed memorable must-see movies.
I was struck by how similar the two films were despite their different settings and plots. In both films, a character uses the word “system” to describe the work they do. That tweaked my attention. Each character understands that a system is an abstract set of rules and procedures you learn in order to succeed, in other words, nothing to do with human relationships, loyalty or concern for others, but just a pattern to follow. That seemed to be the moral matrix common to the two movies.
In both the secret service and the investment firm, employees are being let go. However, in each, a dismissed employee has the key to a necessary secret about the system and what will bring it down: it is in information in a briefcase in TTSS and in a USB memory stick in Margin Call, both of which are handed off to someone else to solve. In both films, a recently retired or laid off employee is forced back to work to solve the crisis.
Both films show hierarchies comprised almost entirely of men at the top and woman in menial roles much further down. The one woman in management in Margin Call is invited to fall on her sword, as it were, by allowing herself to be made an example of by being fired. A female cleaner in an elevator is ignored, as the partners talk over her head literally and figuratively, as if she is just part of her cleaning cart. A female operative in TTSS literally loses her life when she is shot at point blank range in an interrogation room. In another chilling scene in TTSS, a young mother nursing a baby is accidently killed by a nervous assassin. No sacrifice by the female has any meaning; whatever value they have or embody is utterly disposable or ignored.
Members of these male hierarchies are ruthless, manipulative, uncaring, unfeeling, uber-competitive, untrustworthy and not worthy of trust. Just a great group of guys … In TTSS, towards the end, a large sign, handwritten in red letters and stuck on a fence proclaims, “The Female Will Rule” … but not just yet (and would it be any better?)
The chief image I remember from Margin Call is a set of elevators going up and down relentlessly – a not-too-subtle symbol for the fortunes made and lost in the stock market. In TTSS, it’s the spy-turned-teacher killing an owl - a symbol of the feminine - in one swift blow. Each carries a sense of the coldly inevitable.
In addition, in both films, there is a feeling of claustrophobia. Time in Margin Call is breathless; the action occurs over 38 tightly wound hours. Despite earning —and spending — a small fortune annually, the traders spend most of their time cooped up, whether in small rooms at work or in dark bar-rooms. No one is shown in a relationship with anything but their work. The characters are imprisoned by their lifestyle and moral choices; the boss’s dog dies and is buried, along with the man’s humanity, in a small shallow grave, outside the home he shared with the woman who is now his former wife (the implication being he has a new trophy wife).
The story in TTSS is told via flashbacks which seem to tighten and reduce the space and time in which characters move. The settings in TTSS include the offices of M16, housed in a series of low-ceilinged rooms, which for some reason, I recall as being underground and painted a disheartening shade of green. There are interrogation rooms and prison cells in Moscow. Back in Britain, a tawdry hotel rooms serves as a meeting place. As in Margin Call, there are not many shots of being out in the open air and when there are, danger lurks. The mole, imprisoned behind barbed wire, is shot when he ventures outside for a breath of fresh air. A character in Margin Call , outdoors at the top of the office building, threatens suicide.
Towards the end of Margin Call, the Jeremy Irons character looking into the future, before the present crisis has even occurred, says something to the effect that after all the dust settles (i.e., people’s lives are ruined), there will be a lot of money to be made picking up the pieces.
These movies, whose directors are outside the mainstream, portray what we would like to consider is outside our personal comfort range: the banal offhandedness we have in inflicting misery on others – usually for a supposedly higher purpose.
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