Margin Call

 The Margin Call is one of the tightest films ever made. Every scene and every line serve a purpose. No time is wasted with the exposition. Focus is on how people justify the evil deed they participate and their internal struggles in an almost impressionistic way, yet you can construct a consistent and surprisingly rich backstory from the subtext.

I have watched it too many times, and noticed more details with almost every watch.

Characters

Let's start with a recap of characters in the corporate bottom up order:

Seth is a junior risk management analyst. He likes his job and has enough skills to survive, but he cannot read the room well, and he is too nosey. He doesn't have any agency, and his sympathy for other people is not genuine.

Peter is a risk management analyst. He moved from academia to finance because of the money. He has sympathy for people around him, but he is also swayed easily by charismatic and powerful people, and he is lured by the considerable more money he can make with a promotion.

Eric is the chief of Seth and Peter. He is an extremely technical person who is not good at corporate politics or understanding the human nature behind the numbers.

Will is Eric's boss. He acts like a finance bro on the surface but he is incredibly perceptive. Sees all the BS of the industry and well prepared for the eventual crisis. Justifies himself by believing that the regular people want the banking industry to be like that, they want the luxury which they cannot normally afford, therefore he is just responding to the demand and even if he doesn't do it, somebody else will. Highly loyal to Sam.

Sam is the boss of Will and other traders on the floor. Sam justifies himself by need of money, but all the reasons for his need seems to be coming from his own bad decisions. He neglects his family, commits everything to the firm, and despite the huge disagreements eventually executes all the orders.

Sarah is the chief risk management officer. She is ambitious but conflict averse. Blindly follows orders but goes into paralysis and denial when encountering a problem.

Jared is a killer, complete psychopath. He never loses his control, shows very little emotion, prepared to do whatever is necessary to win.

John is the CEO of the firm. Charismatic but impatient. Financial crisis is just a part of the economic cycle for him, a game detached from consequences in the real world.

Scene by Scene Notes

(some scenes with little information relating to back story or character development are merged together or skipped)

Lay offs

• Seth asks if these people are 'them'; he knows about the layoff and he wants to talk about it, but Will says it is best to ignore. Seth starts the day with -1 points.
• The HR representative checking Eric's service length in mid sentence while apologizing is a nice touch about the insincerity and the carelessness of the process, but he is given a decent severance, and the precautions like immediately terminating all access seems to be designed specifically to silence him rather than a standard procedure.
• First back story hint drops around 8:30 mark: Eric mentions he shouldn't have gone to Sarah last year. Will is not surprised by this information so he must know at least the broad scope and the result of the discussion between Eric and Sarah. Will also tells Eric to forget the work he has been doing, which is probably what he has been told about the concerns by upper management.
• Seth just says "yeah" after Peter's consolation and asks about themselves to Eric [Seth -2].
• Sarah couldn't confront Eric about the phone and weakly denies her involvement [Sarah -1].

Aftermath

• Sam acts emotional about his dying dog, but still mentions the "thousand bucks a day" vet fee which should be relatively minor cost to him considering even Will makes 2.5M a year. This seems more about Sam baffled by a problem which can't be solved by throwing money at it, rather than valuing the money more than his dog.
• Sam switches off the emotion mode simply by wearing the glasses. It is also funny that he tells people to not remember the laid off people ever again, and then they spend the whole night chasing Eric :)
• Peter takes Sam's comment about "people between you and your boss' job are fired" very seriously and starts working. Seth tries to get another negative point by pulling Peter to the party but Peter is actually in a very good mood.
• Seth still gets the point by drinking alone while the rest of group are hanging together around Will [Seth -3].

Delivering News to Will

• "We are starting to test those patterns" "When?" Will goes from drunk to fully awaken in an instant. Will clearly doesn't know much about any of the details, but maybe he was told Eric's concerns were baseless and everything was working according to the model, and now suddenly learning that they are past that point is a huge shock.
• Will immediately tries to locate Eric, before even talking with Sam, presumably to prevent Eric from leaking the information.
• Seth knows about Eric's three kids, and deduces he might want to avoid going home with such news. Unexpected insight [Seth -2].
• "I don't think that would be a good idea" Will avoids even giving a tiny hint to Sam here. Not leaving evidence in case phone or email is recorded? Avoiding a leak? Probably both.

Car Ride

• Seth doesn't care about clueless people outside when Peter was wondering about them [Seth -3].
• Seth doesn't know Peter's age [Seth -4].
• Seth trivializes their job [Seth -5].

Delivering News to Sam

• Will seems to have studied a bit, he sells Peter's explanation to Sam as his own :)
• Sam's reactions mimic Will's. Although they are privy to some details, they don't know more than each other. This implies a stronger friendship between them, and perhaps Sam sharing his side with Will. Sam, however, is a bit more smart, and realizes the Peter and Seth duo can also leak the information, and calls them back.
• Seth continues drinking [Seth -6].
• Seth talks about how much everybody is making. This annoys Peter [Seth -7] at first, but then Peter is also interested about the high numbers Will and above are making.
• They stuck in the traffic. Might look like an unimportant detail, but contrast it with John's arrival in helicopter later.
• Seth meets Sam with a bottle in hand and without the tie [Seth -8]. Thankfully he was smart enough to drop it before the meeting [Seth -7].

Meeting with Jared

• Jared seems to understand the report quite well, he certainly never reveals anything which might indicate the report is too technical or complicated. This is not only different than Will and Sam, but also from John.
• Jared remembers Eric by name and learns that he was fired. That means firing decision came from Sarah only. Jared isn't happy to learn the risk department is just Peter and Seth now [Sarah -2].
• Sarah tries to force ownership of the discovery to Peter (potentially to make Eric's firing less relevant) and discredit him a bit by questioning Peter's relatively junior position. Peter turns out to be a rocket scientist [Sarah -3].
• Jared is really interested in Peter. Peter reveals his decision to switch career for better money [Peter +1].
• Despite the expensive watch on his wrist which was shown earlier, Jared asks the time twice in a row. Nice way of indicating he is in panic mode.
• Jared asks Sam how quickly they can dump the assets. This is an important point for later, Jared had the idea to sell everything at this point, and probably even before.
• "Do you?" "Yes". Unlike John in the later meeting, Jared is calm about Sam's moral objection. Jared is really a cold, calculating person.
• Sam tells Sarah he warned about this last year.
• Jared goes out of the room and comes back before Sam could even finish his sentence. He talked with John as revealed later. There is no way he could have explained all the details, got John to be worried and decide to schedule a late night meeting with all the partners in such a short timeframe. John must have been waiting something like this and Jared probably only gave a signal.
• "The fuck is his name" [Seth -9].
• Jared tells Sarah "we have talked about this".

Roof

• This time, Peter asks about Will's income.
• Will is really conservative in his spending, considering he has to spend some on clothes, drinks, luxury, etc as a salesperson. Big savings, some money to parents, his mortgage is quite low as a percentage of his income. He is clearly not counting on continuous employment.
• John skips the NYC traffic by arriving in a helicopter thus avoids seeing all the people along the way and wondering about how his decision will affect their lives.

Jared's Room

• "We were wrong" "No, you were wrong" "We discussed this" Jared already preparing to blame Sarah for the fall [Sarah -4].
• Sam having made some snarky comments before, immediately leaves the room after this exchange, claiming he survived this many years by not hearing this kind of conversations. He clearly knows that a head is going to be sacrificed and doesn't want to be pulled to that fight.
• "(exposed) To (John) Tuld or To Market". Jared and Sarah couldn't have kept the trouble from John, but maybe promised they will handle it, and they are worried about John's reaction.
• Seth is still without a tie [Seth -10].
• Jared asks them to not sugarcoat anything cause John is too smart. Why does he think they might sugarcoat it? Maybe he wants to ensure that the case is strong so their reaction "sell it all" would be natural? Is he worried that if they sugarcoat it, John might suspect that Jared silenced them? Or simply he knows that John is very charismatic and might scare these low level employees? Probably all of them :)

Board Meeting

• John clearly knows everything, but unlike Jared, willing to act humble to manipulate the meeting to arrive at the conclusion he wants.
• Jared is relieved to pass the spotlight to Peter.
• "it wasn't brains that got me here" coupled with John's body language is simultaneously scary and reassuring. While sounding self degrading, it actually mocks the entire board.
• "Sell it all" Jared waits a lot before saying this. He wanted to make the proposal look like it was spontaneous and inspired by John's "be first" suggestion so no one would think everything was planned? He wanted to see that this is really what his boss wants before even making a proposal? Probably both again.
• John does all three of his methods. He cheats by hiding the problem, he is the first one to sell, and he times and executes the action smartly. He also momentarily drops his piercing gaze down when saying "I don't cheat", phenomenal acting.
• John controls himself when Sam objects, and turns the order into a challenge for Sam.
• Ramesh's dialogue here and in the Jared's meeting are so to the point, unambiguous and authoritative that it establishes the character as a good corporate counsel but also prevents us from learning more.
• Sam is the only one using John's first name, even Jared was addressing John as Sir.
• Sam's solution to forcing traders to knowingly sell bad assets is just throwing them more money.
• When Sam objects again, John loses control temporarily. Partly from losing the control of the narrative, partly from Sam's importance in executing the sale.
• Sarah not only unable to suggest any solution, brings up Eric [Sarah -5].

Sam and John

• John knows that a financial crisis is coming.

Elevator

• Beautiful detail: Jared and Sarah don't even acknowledge the existence of the cleaner lady right there.
• Sarah tries to threaten Jared. Jared is not concerned since John knew about everything all along [Sarah -6].

Boys

• Will not only demands the hot sauce but marks it with his gum :)
• Will is aware how much John made last year.

Tuld and Sarah

• John tells Sarah that a head must be sacrificed. Sarah weakly reminds she filtered some information to him a year ago. John doesn't want to go there and Sarah retorts that Jared, John and her clearly agreed. John is really angry now.

Seth and Will goes to Eric

• Jared checks if Will would help if Sam doesn't agree with the plan. Will sides with Sam strongly probably because he knows Jared wouldn't keep him around without Sam regardless of what he would do, rather than his loyalty to Sam.
• Will doesn't like Seth mentioning the loan payments on the house but he uses it later himself.
• While some people point out the fire sale, I believe it is in this scene, Will's sales skills really shine. He strategically mentions "house looks good" to remind him about the mortgage, and then says "don't beat yourself too much, some people like driving the long way home" to connect Eric's story about the bridge with Eric's own night adventure before arriving at his home in a poetic way. Giving these points subtly and while seemingly agreeing with him is brilliant.
• Will doesn't want to answer honestly at first, but then reveals the Seth is going to be fired.
• Seth suddenly worried about "real" people which he didn't seem to care when talking with Peter earlier. Will blames the regular people for causing banking system to be like this.

Tuld and Sam Again

• Sam gets angry but still keeps the paper with the bonus money amount.
• Sam's reservations voice is very weak.
• It took me a while to realize this but when Peter and Sam are standing outside of the building, Peter has already talked with John and promoted, and as instructed by John, he is basically checking if Sam is going to do it, and if Sam told anyone else. Sam realizes Peter is spying and gets pissed off when Peter asks about his son, but Sam also realizes that he really never thought about talking with his son.

Seth and Jared

• You might interpret this scene as showing Jared's lack of empathy. However his "really?" response and the tone feels more like he sees through Seth and just doesn't believe Seth's honesty.

Sarah and Eric

• Sarah mentions Eric's point was passed up while trying to apologize. Since we know Jared and Tuld were aware of everything, this apology feels defensive rather than genuine. Eric doesn't seem to care and accepted the fate and ready to take the money and move on.
• Sarah asks about Eric's kids but without any details or follow up. Almost like, she thinks to herself, and considers what she gave up for the carrier which is ending now.

Traders Meeting

• Jared is standing close and paying a lot of attention.
• Sam subtly normalizes the situation with "if you've never seen this before" as if it isn't a unique event.
• Sam takes off glasses as he gets emotional. Jared moves behind at this point, probably satisfied with Sam's pep talk.
• "For the greater good", Sam's delay in coming up with this was superb acting.

Firesale

• Will adjusts his attitude and speech to each buyer masterfully.
• Despite the word getting out, and buyers becoming more and more concerned, even at the end no buyer was aware of the true scale of things.

John's Lunch

• Sam not only gives up his request of leaving with options, but accepts working there for next two years saying he needs money.

Sam Burying His Dog

• Peter knows Sam's son, and Sam's ex-wife says "Sammy called", "they got hammered", likely Sam's son is also working in finance, maybe at a competing firm? That would explain why John would want Peter to check if Sam called his son.

Backstory

Eric suspected about the problem a year ago, and told Sarah.

Sam was also aware that "numbers don't add up" and has been "saying that for years". I haven't noticed any detail about how Sam and Eric affected each other on this. They don't have a single scene together.

Sarah and Jared convinced John that while there is a risk, it won't be exposed by anybody, and they agree to continue making money with these products. Eric didn't have any solid proof yet and Sam didn't have skills to build one.

Eric hasn't give up on the problem and got close to a solution. Sarah panics and fires him without telling anybody. This was done too late to prevent a leak, but also the firm was already experiencing bumps, so it was just a matter of time for the secret to be revealed to everybody.

Jared, on the other hand, was already planning a fire-sale to solve the problem when it hits.

Peter's completed analysis didn't reveal anything new to Jared and John except that the problem can now be seen by anyone looking into it, and they must execute the sale immediately.