Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 276

Ronda Rousey and Human Robots: The Week in Pop-Culture Writing

Rousey Says She’s Down but Not Out
Ramona Shelburne | ESPN the Magazine
“The more invincible she seemed, the louder she was cheered and from more corners. She was becoming everyone’s avatar. That’s a lot to put on someone who makes a living fighting in a cage—it’s a lot to put on anyone, probably too much. But she kept living up to it until Holm’s thunderous kick to the side of her head sent her crashing down to earth.”

The Last Human Robot
Boris Kachka | Vulture
“Daniels can be a prickly ambassador, publicly tweaking the Ewoks, the suit, the actors, and Lucas himself. But what true fan, Abrams included, hasn’t had a beef with the franchise? Like 3PO and R2-D2, Star Wars and Daniels have something deeper than love: commitment. ‘People say, “What’s it like to go back to C-3PO?”’ Daniels says. ‘Well, I never left him.’”

(Not) All Men
Nona Willis Aronowitz | Matter
“It’s painful to think about what we’re burying, but the alternative is equally undesirable. It would mean seeing every human as an insignificant speck of a larger problem rather than balls of contradiction and messiness. It would mean not trusting anyone. And it would require giving up on a staggering number of people, especially Our Dudes.”

Spotlight and Its Revelations
Sarah Larson | The New Yorker
“Since seeing the movie Spotlight, about the Boston Globe investigation of sexual abuse and coverups in the Catholic Church, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and the questions it raises—about how far institutions will go to protect themselves, about who we listen to and protect, about who and what we ignore, about the power of disclosure and even conversation.”

The Year in Found Families
Haley Mlotek | Hazlitt
“The story of a family found outside of the traditional, conventional, limited sense of that word is, I’ve come to believe, the only story that matters. The work of building one is not precious, not melodramatic, not sentimental. It is both the very simple and very complex renewal of parts, a renewal that happens no matter where or how we’re moving beside the people we’ve vowed to stay with.”

Donald Trump Really Doesn’t Want Me to Tell You This, But …
Mark Bowden | Vanity Fair
“With Trump, what you see is what you get. His behavior was cringe-worthy. He showed off the gilded interior of his plane—calling me over to inspect a Renoir on its walls, beckoning me to lean in closely to see … what? The luminosity of the brush strokes? The masterly use of color? No. The signature. ‘Worth $10 million,’ he told me.”

Scott Weiland’s Family: ‘Don’t Glorify This Tragedy’
Mary Forsberg Weiland | Rolling Stone
“But at some point, someone needs to step up and point out that yes, this will happen again—because as a society we almost encourage it. We read awful show reviews, watch videos of artists falling down, unable to recall their lyrics streaming on a teleprompter just a few feet away. And then we click ‘add to cart’ because what actually belongs in a hospital is now considered art.”

There Once Was a Girl
Katy Waldman | Slate
“The narrative impulse is one entwined with anorexia itself. Being sick means constructing an alternate reality, strapping it in place with sturdy mantras, surrendering to the beguiling logic of an old fairy tale: There once was a girl who ate very little. There once lived a witch in a deep, dark wood. Anorexics are convinced that they are hideous, bad, and unlovable. At the same time, they are constantly soliloquizing about their sacrifice, their nobility, their ethereal powers.”

The Art of Flying in the Movies
A.O. Scott | The New York Times Magazine
“We live in the grip of a technological paradox, in which the proliferation of wonders dilutes the possibility of wonder … And yet the domain of astonishment has been extended, its earlier manifestations lovingly preserved. Movies can introduce us to feelings that have no literal correlative, and they can induce those feelings again and again.”

Possessed by a Mask
Sandra Newman | Aeon
“It’s reminiscent of the common trope in superhero comics, where the heroes exercise their powers only when appropriately masked and costumed. This rule is so strictly adhered to that the costume feels essential to the character’s powers, even when, as with Spider-Man, the character’s origin story explicitly demonstrates that it is not.”

In the Heart of the Sea Is No Moby Dick

In the Heart of the Sea, Ron Howard’s new maritime epic, is based on the same true whaling misadventure that inspired Moby Dick. In case audiences aren’t aware of this fact, the very first character who appears onscreen is a young Herman Melville (Ben Whishaw), seen listening to a tale about a giant sperm whale, a shipwreck, and survival against all odds. It takes a degree of audacity to compare your movie so early on to one of the greatest dramatic epics of all time, and what follows might possibly leave viewers longing for Melville’s heroic, allegorical masterpiece, as opposed to the sober tale of endurance that plays out.

Related Story

On Herman Melville's 194th Birthday, a Trio of Theories About Moby-Dick

In the Heart of the Sea is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s nonfiction book, which explored two narratives of the sinking of the whaling boat Essex in 1820—one from a hardy first mate, Owen Chase (Chris Hemsworth), and another from a cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson (played by Tom Holland as a youngster, and Brendan Gleeson in his advanced years). Along with those stories, the book laid bare the intricacies of the whaling industry and the tight-knit community of Nantucket that formed its hub. And yet in the film adaptation, Howard and the screenwriter Charles Leavitt barely scratch the surface in two hours of plodding action.

As a character, Thomas is less a sentient being and more the equivalent of a Go-Pro camera lashed to the front of the ship—he’s there simply to observe the action and relay it to Melville many years later. Owen, although more of a conventional hero as an orphaned outsider and veteran whale killer, is unfortunately one-dimensional, existing onscreen mostly to grit his teeth and shoot steely gazes at the ocean. Hemsworth and Howard’s previous collaboration, Rush, was an energetic biopic where the Australian actor got to play a compelling scoundrel. Chase’s motivations are plainer: He’s got a wife at home, he’s angling to become a captain himself, and the more whales he kills, the closer he gets to that goal.

The first hour of the film sees Chase clashing with his blue-blooded commander George Pollard (Benjamin Walker),who’s been installed as the captain of the Essex through nepotism. But there’s precious little at stake: It’s clear that a terrible calamity awaits them in the Pacific Ocean, and their squabbling hardly amounts to much since Chase is always right and Pollard is a stammering fool. When the crew finally encounters a monstrous whale, Chase is quickly dissuaded from bringing it down when it crashes into the ship and practically tears it in half.

Viewers might find themselves wishing they were watching an adaptation of Moby-Dick instead.

That’s the one big action sequence, but if you came to In the Heart of the Sea looking for intensity, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The sea, as Grantland’s Chris Ryan once noted, is dope—a great setting for epic cinema, whether the waves are rendered in glorious CGI or the actors are freezing their legs off in real dunk tanks. But Howard, who’s never been a supreme visual stylist, somehow misses out on the expansive sweep of the ocean, and the whale-attack scenes are a confusing mess to watch. The audience knows things are going wrong, but not much more than that. Brief, quiet shots of the whale gliding by underwater or stalking its unwitting human prey, make more of an impact, but those moments end much too quickly.

In the Heart of the Sea is, in the end, a worthy retelling of a fairly simple tale, but it’s a bare-bones story without an Ahab or a Starbuck or a Queequeg there to add some magic. Near the end of the film, Melville sits down with a manuscript to write the famous line, “Call me Ishmael,” but viewers are no closer to understanding why he would have been driven to do such a thing. To hear its plot described, the film sounds epic—but what’s an epic without real characters? If a silent whale is your most magnetic screen presence, he should probably appear for more than a few minutes. The rest of the time, the film’s flaws are reflected in Hemsworth’s face as he squints blankly out at the ocean.

Picturing the New Americans

Minneapolis, Minnesota, is home to roughly 30,000 people of Somali origin. Many of them are refugees, having fled famine and decades of war—a situation not dissimilar to that of today’s Syrian refugees. For the past year, photographer Arthur Nazaryan documented this enclave of new Americans to show that Somalis, and migrants in general, could be more than "perpetrators or victims of conflict."

The Somalis who live in Minneapolis are much like regular Minnesotans —barbecuing, riding speedboats, going to the playground, and hosting dinner parties. According to Nazaryan, they are also avid Snapchatters, posting selfies of their every move.  “I was kind of surprised, given how conservative the culture can be, to see the younger generation going out, dating, and using social media,” Nazaryan said.  “In Somali culture, it’s really important to be connected and communicate with each other.”

But earlier this year, the community garnered headlines after a handful of Somali-American men were accused of planning to join ISIS. Three have plead guilty, despite intense efforts from local leaders to counter extremism.

"People only pay attention to them when there are these anomalous cases," Nazaryan said."I think it is worth looking at how this community lives, because they’ve also come as refugees from a country that continues to be torn apart by Islamic extremism — and have been both benefactors of our generosity and victims of our suspicion."

Darth Vader's Day

While the world awaits the debut of the latest Star Wars installment, Ukraine’s Darth Mykolaiovych Vader has some chores to do. He’s got to iron his cloak, vacuum his apartment and prepare dinner for his family.

The Odessa resident, who enjoyed the spotlight earlier this year when he ran for office, invited Reuters photographer Valentyn Ogirenko to photograph his daily life as the leader of the Galactic Empire.

The Cheetahs of the South African Air Force

This week, two cheetahs attacked an officer on a South African air-force base.

The officer was not seriously injured, and was treated for minor wounds on her shoulders and the back of her head. After that, the cheetahs got back to work.

Wait, what?

The cheetahs didn’t wander onto Makhado Air Force Base by accident. They were deployed there earlier this month as part of a program started in the 1990s that places cheetahs on military bases for animal-control purposes. The big cats roam the base freely, hunting small game that might run onto airplane runways from nearby nature reserves and pose risks to flight safety.

“As wild animals become habituated to noises from aircraft, they are no longer frightened off the airstrip at the sound of an oncoming plane,” explains the Hoedspruit Endangered Species Center, which donates cheetahs to the program. Makhado is located near three nature reserves.

The Hoedspruit center, located about a three-hour drive south of Makhado, provided the air base with two male cheetahs this fall. Wim and Tobie, aged six and seven, were born in captivity. They were fitted with GPS collars and brought to Makhado on October 20, where they were kept in a holding area for several weeks “so as to acclimatize them to the sound of aircrafts and their new environment,” according to the center.

Wim and Tobie were released onto the base proper on December 2. On Tuesday, they entered a hangar where several officers were gathered, according to the Associated Press:

The animals were shooed away, but as they stalked off, a warrant officer tried to take their picture. They began to growl. As the warrant officer turned to flee, they pounced.

Cheetahs do not usually attack humans because the animals prefer smaller prey. Captive-born cheetahs are familiar with human contact.

The cheetah natural-security program in South Africa began in July 1993, when two female cheetahs were brought to the Hoedspruit Air Force Base, according to a blog post on the website of Camp Jabulani, a private safari lodge located inside the Kapama Game Reserve in South Africa. The military post, located north of the reserve, saw frequent wildlife visitors, and the cheetahs’ presence made a difference.

Makhado was previously home to three other cheetahs. The animals are a better fit for the job than other big cats because “lions are very big and pose a greater threat to people, while leopards are skittish and would probably move away from the area in search of solitude,” explained the Hoedspruit center in a blog post last month. Male cheetahs are even better: “Female cheetahs are solitary animals. Should they make a kill around the airstrip, they will only consume half a carcass and subsequently lure vultures to the area, which can be an even bigger threat to incoming aircraft.”

Makhado spokeswoman Brigadier General Marthie Visser told the AP that Wim and Tobie will remain on the base. She said the military will investigate the “unprecedented incident,” and will do more to educate officers about cheetahs. The cats will serve a two-year tour at Makhado, and then return to the Hoedspruit center, which focuses on breeding cheetahs and eventually releasing them into the wild.

There are between 12,000 and 15,000 cheetahs left in the wild in Africa. The cheetah, the world’s fastest land mammal, is listed as “vulnerable” on the global inventory of threatened species; loss of habitat and prey, as well as hunting by farmers protecting their livestock, have contributed to declines in population.

Detaining China’s Warren Buffett

On Thursday, Guo Guangchan, often referred to as China’s Warren Buffett, was said to be unreachable. The 48-year-old businessman oversees Fosun International, one of China’s largest conglomerates, which owns Club Med and Cirque du Soleil.

Guo’s disappearance initially prompted speculation he may have been ensnared in a government anti-graft crackdown. According to the BBC, Guo “was linked to a corruption court case in August.” The report adds Guo “wouldn’t be the first high-profile executive in China’s financial sector to have gone missing in recent weeks.” Analysts have noted Fosun has been rapidly expanding in recent months, across many industries.

News of his disappearance caused the trading of shares in Fosun to be temporarily suspended in Hong Kong.

“We are still in shock, although there have been similar rumors about him in the past as well,” one source at Fosun told the South China Morning Post on Thursday. “Guo is very cautious in his handling of the government. As he often tells us, ‘Stay close to politics, but stay away from politicians.’”

On Friday, it was reported that Guo had in fact been detained by police—though the severity of that development was slightly undercut by his company, which offered that he was simply helping authorities in their efforts.

Everything You Know About Latkes Is Wrong

In 1927, when the word “latke” made its English debut, The American Mercury defined the Hanukkah delicacy as “luscious … pancakes made of grated, raw potatoes, mixed with flour and shortening.” Almost 90 years later, Jews are still frying the potato pancakes, and serving them up as a holiday treat. “The point of latkes at Hanukkah is not the potato but the oil,” Joan Nathan explained to her readers in The New York Times this year. “What matters is the recounting of the miracle of one night’s oil lasting eight nights in the temple over 2,000 years ago.”

Each year, Jews throughout the United States mark the holiday by frying grated potatoes in olive oil, savoring a treat that is, as Nathan put it, “traditional, nostalgic, and crispy.”

Or, at least, crispy. Because there’s nothing traditional about the contemporary American latke. Virtually every element of it is a lie. Delicious? Yes. Traditional? Not in the slightest.

Let’s start with the oil. There weren’t a whole lot of olive trees in the Eastern European lands from which many Jews emigrated to the United States. In the Old World, the common cooking fat was schmaltz—rendered from chickens, geese, or beef. And, in fact, the Mercury specified that latkes were to be “fried in schmaltz.”

But on this side of the Atlantic, Jews soon began to use Crisco—memorably marketed as the miracle for which “the Hebrew Race had been waiting 4,000 years.” When shortening fell from favor, it was replaced by olive oil, allowing Hebrew-school teachers and pulpit rabbis across the country to connect the pancakes to the story of Hannukah. Because if not for the oil, why are Jews celebrating the holiday by frying potatoes in the first place?

Which is a good question. Potatoes, after all, are Andean tubers. They arrived in Europe in the 16th century, but weren’t widely cultivated in Eastern Europe for another 200 years. By the early 19th century, though, they were a staple crop in the lands with large Jewish populations, most often consumed boiled or mashed. Shredding them and frying them in schmaltz elevated a dull staple into a luxurious holiday treat.

But when the landmark Art of Jewish Cooking explained in 1958 that these were the pancakes “which the wives of the soldiers of the ancient hero Judah Maccabee hurriedly cooked for their men behind the lines,” it was off by a couple millennia. One thing we know for certain about the Hasmoneans, heroes of the Hannukah tale? They weren’t eating potatoes.

So what was a latke before the arrival of the potato? Still a pancake, but made from grain—most commonly buckwheat or rye—and fried in schmaltz. That’s what there was in the early winter in those frozen lands, as Gil Marks details in his magisterial Encyclopedia of Jewish Food.

But buckwheat and rye are northerly crops. How did Jews celebrate the festival before they migrated away from the Mediterranean shores? The latke, it turns out, has its roots in an old Italian Jewish custom, documented as early as the 14th century. That, it seems, is where Jews first fried pancakes to celebrate Hannukah. Only back then, they were made of cheese.

Cheese? Well, yes. The original latkes were, effectively, deep-fried ricotta. They honored the custom of celebrating the holiday by consuming dairy goods.

Hold on. Dairy goods? The custom was based on the story of Judith. She seduced a general named Holofernes, who came at the head of an invading army, by feeding him and plying him with wine. As he slipped into an alcoholic stupor, she seized his hair and hacked off his head with a sword. Then she tucked it in with her picnic provisions, left his camp, and presented it to the people of her town to mount on the wall. The terrified invaders fled, and the land was saved.

The 14th century, it seems, is when Jews first fried pancakes to celebrate Hannukah. Only back then, they were made of cheese.

Did you miss the part about the cheese? Well, it’s not in the standard text, or in the ancient variants—except for an obscure Syriac version. The Book of Judith—like the books of I and II Maccabees, which relate the story of Hannukah—is not even in the Jewish Bible; it’s an apocryphal text. All three, however, were included in the Bibles of Catholic Europe. Whether through an unbroken chain of transmission, or more probably, as a story adapted from the version preserved in the Vulgate, the tale of Judith began to circulate again in Medieval Jewish communities.

And in one of those Hebrew versions, Judith feeds Holofernes two pancakes, salted and mixed with cheese. That version may have reflected an existing rabbinic tradition, but more likely inserted these details as allusions to other Biblical episodes. But either way, medieval Jewish legal codes soon recorded the custom of eating cheese to honor Judith, variously the sister or aunt of Judah Maccabee.

Clear enough? Only, it turns out, there’s another twist. The story of Judith is actually set hundreds of years before the time of the Maccabees, even though many scholars now believe it was composed in the Hasmonean period. There’s nothing in it to connect Judith to Judah Maccabee, save the similarity of their names; no explicit reason to tie Judith to the celebration of Hanukkah. But without ready access to the book itself, it appears that Medieval Jews conflated Judith’s story with the Hanukkah tale.

So what’s a latke?

It’s a shredded Andean tuber, fried like a buckwheat pancake, which was substituted for Italian cheeses, once eaten to honor a mistaken reading of obscure variants of an apocryphal text.

But it’s crispy, and delicious.

Canada Returns to Airlifting Refugees

The first planeload of Syrian refugees arrived late Thursday in Toronto where they were welcomed by Justin Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister, and members of his Cabinet.

“We really would like to thank you for all this hospitality and the warm welcome and all the staff—we felt ourselves at home and we felt ourselves highly respected,” said Kevork Jamkossian, who was among the first to emerge from the plane with his wife and their daughter, Madeleine.

Trudeau replied: “You are home. Welcome home.”

Jamkossian, a blacksmith, his wife, a sales clerk, and their daughter spent eight months in Lebanon before their arrival on Thursday.

“We suffered a lot,” Jamkossian said. “Now, we feel as if we got out of hell and we came to paradise.”

There are several videos of the interactions Trudeau had with the new arrivals. Here is one:

The more than 160 Syrians who arrived from Beirut, the Lebanese capital, are part of the 25,000 refugees Trudeau’s government has pledged to accept by the end of February. Another planeload of refugees is expected to arrive Saturday. The Canadian airlifts are being carried out from Beirut and Amman, the Jordanian capital, the two cities where the Canadian government has set up refugee-processing centers for Syrian fleeing their civil war.

The airlifts are a return to a Canadian tradition of flying to safety large numbers of beleaguered people from around the world. In the 1990s, Canada took in 5,000 people from Kosovo; in 1972, it flew 5,000 people from Uganda; 60,000 Vietnamese were airlifted in 1979-80.

The previous Canadian government, led by Stephen Harper, had tightened the rules for refugee settlement—though it had resettled more than 2,000 Syrian refugees from January 2014 until Trudeau’s election in October. Those refugees were mostly sponsored by private Canadian citizens and groups and flown in on passenger aircrafts. Harper’s government insisted Syrian refugees needed to be carefully vetted in case they posed a security threat.

But that policy was sharply criticized after the death of a 3-year-old Syrian boy, whose body on a Turkish beach became the defining image of the refugee crisis. The scale of the Syrian refugee crisis only added to the criticism.

Indeed, Trudeau’s efforts to distinguish his government from Harper’s go beyond Syrian refugees. He has appointed the most diverse Cabinet in the country’s history, with an equal number of women and men; allowed scientists to discuss their findings without government approval; and has vowed government transparency—all moves that address key criticisms of his predecessor.

Of course, we’re still only two months into the new government, and policies—and, indeed public opinion—can quickly change. But at Toronto airport on Thursday night, Trudeau noted that the refugees enter Canada as permanent residents “with social insurance numbers, with health cards and with an opportunity to become full Canadians.

“This is something that we are able to do in this country because we define a Canadian not by a skin color or a language or a religion or a background,” he said, “but by a shared set of values, aspirations, hopes and dreams that not just Canadians but people around the world share.”

A Mega-Merger of Equals

The boards of directors of DuPont and Dow Chemical Company have unanimously approved a merger between the two chemical giants, the companies announced Friday. They are calling it a merger of equals, and the combined company, DowDupont, is worth more than $130 billion.

The merger is expected to close in the second half of 2016, subject to approval by regulators and shareholders from both companies. About 18 and 24 months after a merger, DowDupont will be spun off into three independent, publicly traded companies—an agriculture company, a material science company, and a specialty products company, the statement said. The spin off is expected to be tax-free, and is an attempt to assuage regulatory concerns about the size of the proposed merger, one of the year’s biggest.

​Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive officer, called the merger a “game-changer.”

“This transaction is a major accelerator in Dow’s ongoing transformation, and through this we are creating significant value and three powerful new companies,” he said. “This merger of equals significantly enhances the growth profile for both companies, while driving value for all of our shareholders and our customers.”

Liveris will become executive chairman of the newly formed DowDuPont Board of Directors.

Edward D. Breen, chairman and chief executive officer of DuPont, called the merger “a definitive leap forward” for his company’s plans for higher growth and higher value.

“Each of these businesses will be able to allocate capital more effectively, apply its powerful innovation more productively, and extend its value-added products and solutions to more customers worldwide,” he said.

Breen will become chief executive officer of DowDuPont. A yet-to-be named chief financial officer will report to him.

Under the terms of the deal, Dow shareholders will receive a 1 DowDuPont share for each Dow share; DuPont shareholders, meanwhile, will receive 1.282 shares in DowDuPont for each DuPont share they own. Shareholders from the two companies will own about 50 percent each of the combined company, excluding preferred shares.

The transaction, the statement said, is expected to save $3 billion over the two years after the transaction is closed.

The Wall Street Journal adds:

Still, there is no guarantee antitrust regulators would bless the union or that a breakup plan would address any such concerns. The merger would combine two top suppliers of industrial and agricultural chemicals and crop seeds, but it comes as sinking commodity prices and a strengthening U.S. dollar have hurt revenue across the companies’ business lines.

The Journal in a separate story points out that the merger is likely to spur others in the industry.

Dow and DuPont get most of their revenue from sales of chemicals and materials, but a combination wouldn’t sharply shift the competitive landscape in that relatively fragmented industry. A deal would, however, be the first major shake-up in more than a decade for the seed-and-pesticides business currently led by six firms including Germany’s Bayer AG and BASF SE. Those companies are contending with weak crop prices world-wide that have pinched farmers’ wallets and forced them to curtail spending on everything from seeds to fertilizer and tractors.

DowDuPont would be headquartered in Midland, Michigan, and Wilmington, Delaware.

The Big Short: Sound and Fury on Wall Street

Adam McKay is angry, and righteously so. The director of The Big Short, a rollicking adaptation of Michael Lewis’s non-fiction examination of the financial crisis, has taken that book’s disparate threads and thrown them together onscreen, and the messiness feels almost justified. Just 10 years ago, a market catastrophe brewed and was largely ignored because there were so many moving pieces to put together. McKay seeks to find order, but at the same time, he’s taking cynical delight in the chaos. He’s created a film that is fun to watch, but based on themes that are terrifying to consider.

Related Story

Margin Call: A Financial-Crisis Film That's on the Money

Lewis’s book covered Wall Street’s astute few who foresaw the 2008 recession and “shorted,” or bet against it, making billions off of the country’s economic ruin. McKay tells those same stories, and yet at times it feels like The Big Short can’t decide if its protagonists are heroes or villains. Here are people who saw through the lies perpetrated at every level of the booming markets in the mid-2000s, each of them charming renegades in their own ways, but in profiting off of it, they were really just symptoms of a larger problem. McKay shoots every phone call and boardroom meeting so kinetically and lumps in wild dashes of humor, but by the end of the film, he wants the audience holding their heads in their hands with dismay. It mostly works.

Our heroes, such as they are, include Michael Burry (Christian Bale), an anti-social savant who nearly drives his hedge fund into bankruptcy by making a billion-dollar bet that the housing market will collapse; Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling), a slimy trader who’s been ostracized for telling his colleagues the sky is falling; Ben Rickert (Brad Pitt), a retired trader and paranoiac convinced of Wall Street’s underlying corruption; and Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a phlegmatic money manager who’s the closest thing the film has to a hero. Each of them independently identify the ticking time-bomb of subprime mortgages and collateralized debt obligations, ignored by Wall Street’s rating agencies; only Baum seems the least bit angry about what their coming collapse implies.

If the very phrase “collateralized debt obligations” sends you to Wikipedia, McKay and co-writer Charles Randolph have a solution for that—The Big Short does its best to parcel out information about each element of the crisis as plainly as possible, even enlisting surprise celebrity cameos to break the fourth wall and talk straight to the audience about credit-default swaps and the like. This is part of the freewheeling charm that made McKay such an exciting voice in comic filmmaking over the last 10 years—he’s collaborated with Will Ferrell on films like Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Step Brothers, and The Other Guys, all of which contained similar mad flourishes.

But it often feels like McKay is working his hardest to spice up a film that mostly consists of phone conversations. His camera zooms wildly into characters’ faces, slowing down and blurring as if succumbing to a fit of rage, turning even the most basic exchanges of dialogue into action scenes. His passion for the material, and fury at the system he’s portraying, is palpable, but The Big Short is at its best when it slows down for a second. A sequence where Baum and his team, exploring the stability of the sub-prime market, visit an almost entirely vacated tract of new homes in Miami is weighted with a compassion that most other scenes lack. That’s necessary—you don’t want the film to have too much compassion for its blood-sucking ensemble—but the wild lurches in tone can be exhausting.

Some of the cast are sleepwalking, clearly more interested in the themes being discussed than the roles themselves. Pitt, in a smaller role, mostly mumbles and broods; Bale does a lot with a role that consists of his character sitting alone in an office listening to death metal and ignoring his emails. Gosling is smarmily funny, somehow simultaneously magnetic and repulsive; after years wandering the halls of mediocre art cinema, it’s wonderful to see him cut loose again. Carell is one-note, playing the kind of millionaire who feels he has free range to express his fury and disgust to anyone he interacts with, but as a surrogate for McKay and the audience, he’s a vital presence, and the only character in the film who has a real emotional arc.

There are moments in The Big Short which feel almost absurdly on the nose. In one scene, Melissa Leo pops up as a representative of the ratings agencies which continued to slap sub-prime mortgages with triple-A credit ratings even as the market was openly festering. In case you don’t get how short-sighted she is, McKay has her wearing wraparound dark glasses, recovering from some kind of eye surgery, literally squinting into the dark as she’s confronted with a catastrophe her organization helped create. It’s unbelievable—but that’s McKay’s point. In almost every scene, you can feel the director gesturing to the audience, asking, “Can you believe this happened?” With every scene, he’s delighted and horrified to tell you, it absolutely did.