2 days ago
The six best films about financial turmoil
Finance is not an obvious subject for dramatists. Interest rates, term sheets, mark-to-market accounting: these are phrases to make the average viewer's eyes glaze over. But when markets plunge—dragging down Main Street along with Wall Street—screenwriters' interest surges. Perhaps viewers can expect some terrific films about the tariff-induced chaos in years to come. Until then, here are the best films made about financial turmoil.
The financial crisis of 2007-09 was decidedly serious, but this film—about a group of outsiders and hustlers who bet on the housing bubble bursting, and hence foresaw the crisis—is very funny. (It is adapted from a book of the same name by Michael Lewis.) Various celebrities make cameos to explain financial concepts directly to viewers, while Steve Carell, Christian Bale (pictured below) and a frighteningly tanned and venal Ryan Gosling play three of the men who profit from the crisis. This film is morally complex and gripping; it informs and outrages.
This documentary is about financiers who ended up in prison because they thought they were cleverer than everyone else. Greedy and hubristic, Enron's executives used dodgy accounting and aggressive PR tactics to make their energy-trading firm seem more profitable than it was. Investors lost billions and the top executives were convicted of fraud, though the boss, Kenneth Lay, died shortly before his sentencing. Based on an equally enjoyable book by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind.
The Joad family, kicked off their land in Oklahoma during the Great Depression, head west to California to make a better life. The story could easily have been leaden, but Henry Fonda's spiky lead performance as Tom Joad, and the extraordinary cinematography of Gregg Toland (who also filmed 'Citizen Kane'), make it a work of art. John Steinbeck's novel is an American masterpiece; this film is better.
A young analyst at an investment bank finds out that the firm is overexposed to risky mortgage-backed securities. This film (pictured below), set in 2008, focuses on the next 24 hours, as the firm sells everything and panic spreads across Wall Street. The ensemble cast is terrific, in particular Paul Bettany as a shark with a well-hidden heart of gold. But watch it for its portrayal of the rituals and culture of high finance: how people dress and defer to superiors, what they talk about outside the office and how they cut each other's throats.
Another film about the crisis of 2007-09, this time about the headliners. After the collapse of Lehman Brothers, Hank Paulson, America's treasury secretary (William Hurt), Ben Bernanke, the chair of the Federal Reserve (Paul Giamatti), and the leaders of the biggest banks gather. They negotiate the Troubled Asset Relief Programme, the government's purchase of bad assets from banks to unfreeze credit. The script is instructive—characters explain things to each other for the viewer's benefit—so you'll finish the film having learned something as well as having been entertained.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Jordan Belfort, a smooth-talking huckster who, in real life, made millions in penny-stock scams before going to prison. Martin Scorsese may have intended to make a morality tale about the dangers of filthy lucre, but Belfort and his buddies are clearly having more fun than the honest lawmen who eventually do them in. Jonah Hill offers a grotesque supporting performance aided by a gargantuan set of false teeth.
