Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2011. The list of films dates from then, and later films on the crisis, such as The Big Short in 2015, are not included.
Here is our selection of 5 films that can help us understand the 2008 financial crisis from every angle, and pick up some knowledge along the way about how the world of finance works: companies, markets and, above all, people, depending on which side of the scales they find themselves on when things get serious.
1. Inside Job
We talked about this film when it came out. We said that people were leaving the cinema as if they’d seen a horror film. Of all the films on this list, it is without doubt the most realistic and the closest to what actually happened, giving a correct, specific and truthful explanation. It’s a documentary, so there are no actors, only real people who were directly or indirectly involved.
2. Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
This sequel, starring Michael Douglas, takes us through the outbreak of the crisis. Although it doesn’t go deep into the epicentre of the crisis, it does offer some clues, through various speeches, about what can kill a market.
3. Margin Call
A star-studded cast and a plot set inside the offices of an American investment bank. The film takes place in the 24 hours before the crisis breaks. Although the bank is never named, everything suggests it could be based on Lehman Brothers. The bank discovers that its toxic assets have pushed it past acceptable risk levels, and its people try to save what they can of the firm, even if it means poisoning the market. I recommend it.
4. The Company Men
This film doesn’t put us at the centre of the crisis or take us into the financial world. Instead it focuses on the corporate world, showing the bitterest side of another group that suffered the consequences of the crisis: “senior executives”. Executives cry too, because at a certain age it can be harder to find a job with a high salary.
5. Too Big to Fail
It doesn’t add much to what the other four films tell us, although the director does a good job. The plot focuses on the power that has been given to the banks, and it may answer your question of why the banks have to be saved for us to be saved.
I may have left some out. If so, let me know.
Featured image: Anthony Quintano, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.jpg){kind=link}