The Big Short (2015, R)

Watching the trailer for this best picture nominee, I was getting slight American Hustle vibes.  In the film’s opening moments, I saw shades of The Wolf of Wall Street.  Ultimately, though, it that stands quite well on its own and doesn’t need comparisons.  This film is its own animal, and it does a fairly difficult job with a lot of skill, humor, and creativity.

In the years leading up to the housing crisis of 2008, there are those who see the writing on the wall and ready themselves to profit from the crash.  Even as everyone insists that real estate is bulletproof, a handful of men start buying “shorts” on mortgage bonds, essentially betting against the housing market.  Part opportunists, part investigators, and part Cassandra from Greek mythology, they get a picture of just how deep the behind-the-scenes corruption goes.

After seeing this movie, I feel like I actually kind of understand the convoluted financial shell-gaming that was going on at this time.  The film does a phenomenal job explaining the basics of mortgage bonds and shorts for laymen, and what’s more, it does it entertainingly.  Fourth-wall-breaking devices guide us through the bank talk, including voiceover narration, asides to the camera, and a few winking “Here’s celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain to explain all this CDO business…” detours.  This tells us what we need to know without grinding the movie to a halt.  Our main voiceover man, Big Bank d-bag Jared, acknowledges that even thinking about mortgage bonds probably makes us feel bored or stupid, which is just the way the banks like it.  (I also really like it when the fourth wall is broken to comment on the true-story aspect of the piece – for example, when Jared interrupts an especially-crazy moment to assure us that “that really happened!” or when small-time investors Jamie and Charlie takes some time out to explain that an implausibly-neat transition was in fact fabricated for narrative fluidity.  It reminds me a little of the kind of stuff Tom Stoppard does in a lot of his historical works.)

The acting is fantastic, although given the way the trailer loses its mind over the cast, that’s no surprise.  The standouts are supporting-actor-nominated Christian Bale as the brilliant outside-the-box thinker Michael (I should point out that Michael is an Aspie, and Bale’s depiction of that feels very lived-in and naturalistic) and Steve Carell as Mark, a jaded idealist with anger management issues.  The film also features Brad Pitt and a very funny Ryan Gosling, along with the terrific Hamish Linklater, Max Greenfield (what’s this New Girl you speak of?  he’s still Deputy Leo from Veronica Mars to me,) Melissa Leo, and Karen Gillan.

As great as the movie is, though, it’s kind of a hard one.  Seeing the characters plant the seeds for their future big payoff, you can’t help but remember that they’re banking on the collapse of the housing market and all the turmoil that went with it.  Yes, they’re the underdogs profiting off of the banks’ greed, fraudulence, and outright stupidity, but in the end, we know that the banks got their golden parachutes while millions of people lost their homes, jobs, and/or savings.  The film does address this conflict, but I was still pulled out of it a few times just to feel disgusted at the characters for recognizing such a broken system and only looking to profit from it.

Warnings

Swearing, drinking, sexual content (including strippers,) and general unethical behavior.

Top Five Songs: Next to Normal

Next to Normal is more than just the best Broadway musical written about a suburban mom living with mental illness.  It’s also a show with a great score that tells its story well.  When I listen to the cast recording, these are the songs I have to repeat before I move on.

“I Miss the Mountains” – In this deceptively gentle solo, Diana laments the sterile haze of medicine-induced stability.  Though she knows how chaotic and damaging it can be in her life, she longs for the extremes that sweep over her when her illness isn’t held back.

Best line:  “Mountains make you crazy - / Here it’s safe and sound. / My mind is somewhere hazy - / My feet are on the ground. / Everything is balanced here / And on an even keel. / Everything is perfect - / Nothing’s real…”

“I Am the One” – I almost paired this song with “You Don’t Know,” which precedes it and segues directly into it.  Anyway, “I Am the One” finds Dan responding to his wife’s accusations in the previous song that he can never understand what it’s like to be at the mercy of your own mind.  However, though Dan hasn’t experienced her pain, he can’t help reminding her that he’s been there every step of the way to help her carry it.

Best line:  “Are you bleeding? / Are you bruised, / Are you broken? / And does it help you to know / That so am I?”

“Superboy and the Invisible Girl” – This one might be my favorite of all.  It was one of the first I ever heard, so there’s a sentimental aspect to it, but I just love the theme:  Natalie’s bubbling-up frustration at always being passed over in favor of Gabe, the absent golden boy with whom she can’t compete.  It’s raw, fierce, and gorgeous.

Best line:  “Superboy and the Invisible Girl… / Son of steel and daughter of air. / He’s a hero, a lover, a prince - / She’s not there.”

“I’m Alive” – I love this song.  It’s such a catchy earbug, but at the same time, the lyrics are so grim and unsettling.  It’s great on its own but even better in the context of the show, where we see the specter that infects the entire house.  Just a really interesting piece of theatre.

Best line:  “I am more than memory - / I am what might be, / I am mystery. / You know me - / So show me.”

“Light” – This had to be a hard show to end, but Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey did well with this finale.  It’s bittersweet, melancholy at times, but it’s also tinged with hope.  It’s the song of people who, though they stumble in the night, know that the morning will come if they can just hold on.  Really beautiful.

Best line:  “The price of love is loss, / But still we pay: / We love anyway.”

Next to Normal (2008)

 

At the 2009 Tony Awards, Next to Normal had the distinction of being the only Best Musical nominee to have both an original story and an original score.  Billy Elliot and Shrek are, of course, both based on movies, and Rock of Ages features a plethora of famous ‘80s tunes.  And then there was the Little Show That Could, the off-Broadway transfer, the rock musical about a suburban mom with bipolar disorder.

 

Diana appears at first glance to be Super Woman – she keeps her nice house in order, manages the lives of her two teenagers, and always makes time for a bit of fun with her breadwinner husband.  However, Diana spins like a manic record, and when the needle slips, the entire family is thrown off-kilter.  She’s spent 16 years living with mental illness, and it seems she only ever gets a grip on hope so it can be torn away from her.  A “blip” early in the show sends her in pursuit of yet more treatments, more faceless doctors who poke and prod her even as they admit they don’t know what they’re doing.

 

I love that the story begins in media res, after so many years of the family’s struggles.  It feels like stories about mental illness almost invariably focus on diagnosis (much like a disproportionate number of LGBT-related stories focus on coming out,) but there are far more angles to explore.  Diana and her family have been through the wringer for most of Diana and her husband Dan’s marriage, throughout the whole of her daughter Natalie’s life.  They’re accustomed to doctors, medications, delusions, breakdowns, and unexpected monkey wrenches, but it’s still so hardevery time.  Though they’ve spent nearly two decades swimming upstream against this, they still can’t see where it is they’re going.

 

I also like the whole family gets ample attention.  Obviously, Diana is the only one who knows what she’s going through, the disorienting undertow of an uncertain state of mind and the conviction that the tricks it plays on her are real.  Through it all, she fights to keep sight of herself and maintain what dignity she can.  However, the show also examines Dan’s determined-yet-deteriorating optimism, his growing exhaustion with the never-ending battle.  Natalie is anxious to grow up and escape her “crazy” household, where it seems only her mother’s pain is worthy of concern, and her rigid attempts to maintain control in her own life threaten to be too much for her.  Diana’s son Gabe gets less internal focus, but he provides sources of conflict for other characters, not least of which because Natalie feels she’s constantly living in his shadow.

 

With a rock score by Tom Kitt (who later joined Lin-Manuel Miranda to write Bring It On) and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, the music is moving, melodic, and a fantastic means of conveying the story.  It’s most successful in introspective numbers that allow the characters to voice their fears, doubts, and frustrations, and there are a handful of melodies that recur throughout the show to good narrative effect.  The rhymes aren’t always the most creative, and some of the imagery is less than inspired, but the lyrics hit the emotional beats beautifully, searing in their vulnerability.

 

Warnings

 

Swearing, sexual references, drug use, and heavy thematic elements.

Benny & Joon (1993, PG-13)

And number two!  I’ve mentioned this movie as the film that made me interested in checking out Buster Keaton’s work, and for that I’ll always appreciate it for that, but it’s a splendid little film in its own right.  With its cockeyed sensibility, well-drawn character relationships, and lovely acting, it’s a unique gem of a dramedy about human connection.

Benny and Joon have always been a duo.  He’s always looked after her, ever since they lost their parents in childhood.  Now well into their grownup years, Benny works in a garage and Joon paints between inciting minor neighborhood incidents that call Benny from work – Joon lives with mental illness, and despite Benny’s insistence that they can get by without anyone’s help, the cracks are starting to show.  He almost never has any time to himself, she doesn’t like the way he treats her like a child, and their relationship has developed with a slight undertone that she has to be the helpless loon and he has to be the weary self-sacrificer.

Their lives are shaken up (of course they are – it’s a movie after all) when an unsupervised Joon acquires the oddball cousin of one of Benny’s friends in a strangely-staked poker game.  Quirky, dyslexic Sam, with his focused gaze, striking non sequiturs, and deep devotion to movies (from the silent greats to terrible slasher flicks,) takes up an unofficial position as housekeeper and Joon-watcher.  He performs old silent comedy routines in public, he uses an iron to make grilled cheese sandwiches, and most significantly, he treats Joon like a person rather than an illness.  Suddenly, Joon is exploring new possibilities for her life, including romance, and Benny is worried that all this change isn’t good for her.

This is a film that lives and dies by its characters, and every last one is engaging, flawed, and likeable.  Mary Stuart Masterson gives a fantastic performance as Joon; she’s shrewdly intelligent, shy, and rather standoffish, and she never loses sight of the way Joon stubbornly tries to hold onto her dignity when her world stops making sense.  Aidan Quinn does a fine job as regular-guy Benny exhausting himself in his efforts to be a provider, not even quite realizing that he’s veering from brother into caretaker (side note – when I first saw Gregson in Elementary, I shouted, “It’s Benny!” like a gleeful dork.)  And this movie was the first that really made me sit up and take notice of Johnny Depp as an actor; his Sam is goofy, perceptive, and very sweet, and he beautifully sells Sam’s fanboy homages to his comedy heroes.  Speaking of, Sam is no Buster, not in terms of sheer athleticism or comic intuition, but his routines are loads of fun and an excellent gateway drug into silent comedy.

In terms of subject matter, I appreciate the film’s earnest handling of Joon’s illness.  Sometimes it’s ridiculous, sometimes it’s heartbreaking, and sometimes it only lingers in the background of the action, and in Benny and Sam, we see how people both over- and underestimate its power.  Joon isn’t incapable of having her own abilities and desires, but neither is she simply a “free spirit” who’d be better off flushing her medication.  Though love can’t “cure” her, it isn’t beyond her reach.  It’s a thoughtful depiction that, in my opinion, does a lot of good.

Warnings

Thematic elements, some language, and light sexual content.