Partner and I saw “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” this weekend. I liked it very much: lots of drama, a few good laughs, some rip-roaring performances, beautiful cinematography (New York cityscapes for the millionth time, but who gets tired of New York?). It’s a revenge tragedy, but it’s also a story of reconciliation, and it has a happy(ish) ending for most of the characters. And it is by far the most entertaining movie I’ve ever seen about the dismal world of high finance.
The critical response has been all over the map. Mostly I credit this to people not liking Oliver Stone as a human being, for whatever reason. But the criticisms seem to hover around the following points:
Stone has oversimplified the situation. Well, yes, of course he has. It’s a two-hour movie. And (I am trying very hard not to invoke Shakespeare here) complex situations, especially those involving historic events, are difficult to present dramatically; they need to be concentrated, boiled down into a few relevant/representative characters and situations, so that we can see the drama happen onstage and understand it. Stone gives us the economic collapse of 2008 using a handful of characters, some of whom represent real historical figures, others fictional characters. Out of the millions of individual motivations, he pulls a few: Greed. Anger. Revenge. Despair.
I think that Stone and Douglas between them have crafted an iconic character in Gordon Gekko, a slimy/attractive hero/villain who energizes every situation he's in. Not every character is quite so three-dimensional, however. One character comes close to being Impersonal Cruel Greedy Capitalist. Another is Vested Out-Of-Touch Capitalist. Another is Sweet Paternalistic Old-Fashioned Capitalist. Luckily, there are very talented actors in these roles, so they don’t feel like cartoons; they feel like people.
If you really want to see a fully-documented film about what happens when capitalists run amok, go see “Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room.” It will send you reeling. If, on the other hand, you want to see a really well-done human drama staged against the backdrop of the Crash of 2008, go see “Wall Street.”
Stone doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Characters throw around terms like “toxic debt” and “moral hazard” without ever defining their terms, and they don’t even use them appropriately at times.
Well, okay, let’s take “moral hazard” as an example of this. I have a pretty good understanding of the term; luckily, James Surowiecki wrote one of his Financial Page pieces on it in the New Yorker a while back. One of the characters does define it, briefly and correctly, in the course of the movie. Then Michael Douglas, at a book signing, is asked by an older lady to define the term, and smilingly gives her a very Weekly Reader explanation of it that doesn’t quite ring true. This is on purpose, I think; Douglas’s character is used to doling out information to rubes, and he gives them what he thinks they can handle; evidently he didn’t think she could handle the subtlety of the concept, and gave her something far simpler and less precise. I can buy that dramatically.
As for the other terms, like “toxic debt” – well, listen. I know they’re financial terms. I have a vague sense of what they mean. I don’t need to be able to answer essay questions about them. I can watch “Sister Kenny” perfectly happily without exactly imagining what the poliomyelitis virus looks like, and without even supposing that Rosalind Russell knew Thing One about polio.
The ending is mawkishly happy. Without spoiling it for you, I will say that the final credits are run over images of a party attended by most of the movie’s characters, who appear to be having a good time. Everyone looks cheerful; the hosts are evidently affluent enough to afford live music; evidently Everything Turned Out Okay.
Except that you know it didn’t. We know that two years have passed between the substance of the drama and the party ending, so all kinds of things may or may not have happened; we are given some glimpses of these things, and many of them are by no means wonderful. Evidently, however, people are still capable of being happy, even if their jobs are in limbo, even if the economy isn’t terrific. Again, I can buy that dramatically. The movie ends with a lift, a moment of freedom; it could have ended in a murky boardroom, it could have demonstrated one more time that business is a grim thing – but Stone chose not to end his movie that way. It was a dramatic choice, and I was pleased with it.
Stone is too easy on the financial industry. Here I think the critics may have something. Partner and I agreed that the banks and firms (most of which are easy to match up with real-life firms) are not portrayed as harshly as they might have been. In real life, they were dreadfully run, and their collapses and near-collapses would be funny if they weren’t so tragic. They gamed the system, and the surviving firms (like JP Morgan) have continued to game the system, and they have done very well for themselves.
By the way, Partner just told me that the pundits on CNBC – many of whom make cameo appearances in the movie – differ with me. They think the movie was far too harsh.
As I said above, I liked the ending. But quite frankly, a Scarface ending would have been nice too, with Shia LaBeouf jumping up on the table at the Federal Reserve meeting with a submachine gun and screaming “Say hello to my little friend!”
For me, that would have been a spectacular ending.
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