During a screening of “Too Big to Fail” by IOP Fellow Diane Casey-Landry in Dunster JCR last night, the cognitive dissonance became overwhelming.
Here stood a film that aimed to inform its viewers about the madness that surrounded the financial meltdown, to show the pinched face of Nancy Pelosi, the slow, measured rumble of Henry Paulson, the soft-spoken, stick-wielding Ben Bernanke. Every cello-filled montage of a CEO storming around NYC screaming curses in his Smartphone, every joke about how press must call a bailout a “very large purchase assistance package,” every shot of a white, hairless, old, rich executive complaining that his golden parachute is not shiny enough, dramatizes the people at the top and emphasizes its true message: that the financial system is an oligarchy of the confused and irresponsible.
However, the take-away is more patronizing than intellectual, and “Too Big to Fail” relies on snappy dialogue and good production values instead of delving into the consequences of its content.
The strangest part of “Too Big to Fail” is its cavalier tone (approximately at the rate of one laugh per minute) mixed with said over-dramatization of financial and federal big-wigs. The sunless Wall Street cannot stand as depressing enough, so why not add cellos and a side-shot of Timothy Geither purposefully striding to Point B? Can’t sit through an explanation of why Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, Bear-Stearns, Wachovia, JP Morgen, and Goldman are suddenly having solvency issues? Then add some profane yelps from the CEOs and a few cracks about the fact that TARP was originally only three pages long. Starting to get bored by the cast of usual suspects? Let’s drag out doppelgängers of Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for some disapproving, fearful glances.
However, despite the range of dialogue and scenes from Washington to New York, there are only two mentions in the whole movie about the consequences of the actors’ decisions. When discussing bailing out AIG, Paulson says that he cannot let them fail like Lehman Brothers because of the dependency of infrastructure, manufacturing, and teachers’ pensions. Second moment: when Timothy Geither goes for his morning run, he feels guilty that passers-by don’t know their economy might not be there the next morning. Otherwise, its a stunning portrayal of the capacity for the top .0001% to care only about their tiny microcosm of pressed shirts and poorly-wielded power.
This is a fine line to tread between showing a group of self-absorbed people as a moral hazard and showing a group of self-absorbed people as entertainment. “Too Big to Fail” should have gone for less laughs and appreciative nods to the likeness of the actors to their role, and more for the message at the end of the movie: that 10 banks now own 77% of investments. However, HBO seemed to think that the fact that our economy could have been destroyed was not dramatic enough for its audience, and resorted to doing what it does best: distracting its viewers from reality.