Simpson, eh?

This Burns cartoon is making the rounds. I saw the movie "Margin Call" last night and wow, talk about a timely movie. And it's good! Jeremy Irons plays a Burns-like character who heads a Lehman brothers-type firm and the film takes place during the day they experience a Minsky or Wile E. Coyote moment and realize they won't be able to meet their margin calls in the near future.

A few things struck me on first viewing. The film points out that two of the risk managers were drawn from different backgrounds, lured by higher pay. Zachary Quinto's* risk analyst has a Ph.D. in propulsion physics, literally is a rocket scientist. Stanley Tucci's veteran once built bridges as an engineer.

An irony is that Quinto's character is promoted in the end, because he and Tucci had developed a friendship or good working relationship. Tucci's character is fired at the beginning of the movie. At the time he was working on some risk analyses that were showing that the firm was in trouble. He hands it off - via a USB flash drive - to Quinto's analyst as he was leaving the building forever. Because they were sorta friends or had a mentor relationship, Quinto was walking Tucci to the door and received the mostly-completed risk analyses which he would explore further and then bring its conclusions to the attention of higher ups. So it's the guys from non-finance backgrounds who allow the company to be the first to dump its toxic assets and minimize the losses the firm will suffer before it goes under.

The film is quite dark and brutal in a David Mamet-social Darwinian manner, but there's also some laugh-out loud humor.

What I didn't quite get is that the film ended with Kevin Spacey's middle manager - who had a conscience somewhat - having sort of a breakdown. He's divorced (from the great Mary McDonnell) and unhappy although successful. Was this some sort of statement that yes these workaholics are rich but unhappy and unfulfilled?

Spacey could get an Oscar for this. He helped produce The Social Network so now he's had back-to-back projects that really, really resonate with the times and are good movies.

Paul Bettany should get an award for his portrayal as one of the firm's knowledgable sergeants.  (The rest of the cast is great too.) He gives a pungent, rationalizing speech explaining to a junior colleague that yes they'll be vilified but they're just doing what people want, providing a service, turning their money into more money, like old-timey alchemy. That's why they get paid so much.

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*Quinto played Spock in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek and recently came out of the closet. That explains why Spock was giving hunky Kirk those longing looks.