Le Capital

Marc Tourneuil (Gad Elmaleh) is an ambitious executive of the French Phenix Bank. When the CEO becomes incapacitated with cancer, he handpicks Tourneuil as the replacement CEO. He's surrounded by enemies. When he starts pushing to be more than a figurehead for the old CEO, he even loses that support. The only support comes from an American hedge fund minority shareholder Dittmar Rigule (Gabriel Byrne). The problem is that his support comes with strings attached. There is also underwear supermodel Nassim that has caught the eye of the married Tourneuil.

This starts off well. I like the corporate intrigue and the paranoid backstabbing. Some of the arguing from the wife and their family does border on naivety. I like the morally dubious protagonist better. However the movie slips as it tries to shoehorn a Hollywood happy ending. It would be better to keep a noir edge to the end. The last half has too many simplistic turns. I would be much happier with a murkier darker progression.

It's interesting that Costa-Gavras chose to make a personal diatribe against finance through his "Capital" since he's most renowned for his politically-oriented themes that contributed to such memorable movies as "Z" or "Missing". I say 'interesting' because "The Capital" reminded me of another finance-themed film from another political director: Oliver Stone's "Wall Street", THE movie that summed up the inner amorality of finance through the iconic : 'Greed, for a lack of better word, is good'

I wasn't surprised that the political director made his cinematic "J'accuse" against finance, since it proved to be true ruler of our liberal world, whose only alibi for existence is to pretend there's no better alternative. After the economical crisis, the Goldman Sachs and Bernard Madoff' cases, after the French President claimed to have made finance his enemy, finance was definitely political matter, and if Costa-Gavras makes a film about it, it's certainly worth our attention. The question is: what would the film show that "Wall Street" didn't? (and this comes from someone who didn't even watched its sequel, "The Wolf of Wall Street" or "Margin Call", not yet)

I expected the most overused clichés from "The Capital", the young ambitious yuppie (Gad El Maleh) riding a fast ascension, his discovery of a world of corruption, lust and greed, ethical dilemmas, probable redemption etc. And the casting of Gad El Maleh didn't comfort my thoughts. Gad (as he's generally called) is one of the most popular comedians in France, but his transition from stage to cinema didn't bring much positive results. His "Chouchou" and "Coco", both cinematic adaptations of popular sketches were critically panned, much more; Gad never really struck as a serious comedian, and was never considered an equal to Jean Dujardin or Vincent Cassel, to give you an idea.

Then I looked at the trailer and was already cringing at his crisped face, he was obviously trying to inhabit the gravity of the subject by playing the tough-guy, and if it doesn't work for Di Caprio, it's even worse for him. The trailer gave away the most archetypal situations, the corrupt bankers, the cynical American, the sexy top-model, the fast-paced editing and the obligatory round trips between Paris, New York, London and Tokyo. I really didn't expect much, and watching the film was almost accidental. The film was a commercial bomb, and even Gad's popularity didn't help, or were people tired of the subject? I guess I wanted to see where I would stand for, and my expectations were so low they could only be positively contradicted.

The first good point relies on the straight-forward narrative, Marc Tourneuil (Gad El Maleh) is not the Boy Scout that would make a perfect puppet for his hierarchy: he understands the malevolent schemes behind his nomination as a CEO of Phenix bank, replacing the former, cancerous President. He knows he has the opportunity of a lifetime to win money and be the master of his own actions. That's a first deviation from the usual 'selling-soul-to-the-devil' plot and it was quite refreshing to see a character who already embraced the cynicism of his environment. The film turns immediately into a chess game involving Tourneuil, the board members, the head of an American hedge fund (Gabriel Byrne), and in a zero-sum game, we expect only one winner.

Indeed, it doesn't take a MBA degree to understand the plot, complex but not contrived. In a nutshell, it's all about finding the tricks to distract the French government from a plan of mass-layoffs in order to increase Phenix' profitability, there are many cases of insider trading, of political maneuvers, fiscal exits and such expectable lines as 'money never sleeps'. The film tries to cover every aspect of finance, succeeding by not making it feel too forced or cliché. However, this owes more to the story than the acting or the script. Gad delivers a fine performance but there are moments where his character didn't exactly know what to do, and I suspect it was the actor lacking the right direction. Gad proved to be an actor of fair capabilities and his performance alternates between some powerful outbursts to awkward lines' deliveries where he's never totally Gordon Gekko, and can't convince as a Buddy Fox.

It's regrettable because Costa-Gavras had the material for a good film, not the most subtle one, but for a gripping thriller and fair entertainment. Yet he polluted it with some unnecessary subplots such as a dull romance with a top model. The film skates over the difficult compatibility between Marc's job and his private life, there are some moments with his wife and his family that could have been fueled with more energy and self-questioning, after all, wouldn't we be interested to see a businessman with a family, for once he's not the lone wolf, young and single. Marc's wife could have added more to the story, allowing her to deviate from "Wall Street" formula but she was too underdeveloped and it's only between Gad and Byrne that the script revealed its few strengths.

Now, I'm more perplexed regarding the fourth-wall breaking moments. It might be a promising concept on the paper to have the protagonist address us, making us wondering if he's really enjoying or disdaining the game he's playing. I think it's up to the actor to make the thing believable or out-of-place, it worked at the ending of "Goodfellas" because Ray Liotta had that liveliness in his eyes, the intensity in the narration that immediately grabbed our attention. Gad talks in a too much laconic voice and really seems like reading lines without believing in them. Anyway, I expected more flamboyance from a modern Robin Hood.

These technical aspects highlight the flaws in the script, that mixed up the words 'insightful' and 'preachy', whether it's to tell us that finance is bad or necessary (or both), we simply wonder if there is something the film shows we didn't already know.

If there is one message that the movie is trying to communicate to its audience it's the above title.

There are of course reviews that point out the alleged likeliness of this film with movies like "Wall Street" usually concluding "that there is nothing new to see". Under closer examination however, any similarities between the two films go only skin-deep and can only be considered superficial. There are fundamental differences between these two movies because they represent two different approaches and evaluations of the same issue and which one hits home is up for you to decide. And thats because "Wall Street" focuses on the seducing power and aloofness of a loan shark that acts as a money fueled lone wolf, as opposed to the naiveness of a young rookie which is slow to disillusion himself about his own actions while he's getting carried away (but eventually comes out on top etc). The caveat of such scenarios is in that they constantly, silently and almost purposefully marginalize the inherent, all consuming, self-perpetuating environment and ill-conceived culture that money in and all by itself creates, even for "the winners of the game".

La Capital on the other hand has none of the above shortcomings when it comes to describing the black hole lurking deep into the very foundations of our culture: Money. It's a film about attitudes and value systems across the board, with a scenario that's free of cliché good-guy-vs-bad-guy dualities and with the courageous nerve to "pull no punches" sparing its viewer from having to suffer another stereotypical "happy ending" made-in-Hollywood (has elements of it but still its not "right into your face").

Finally, I would just like to add that, all in all, Mr Gavras is right in that there will come a time in the not so distant future ... A time in which, among other things, our western culture will look back to the contemporary intellectuals and artists to examine which ones did of their duty in terms of articulating the public opinion, bringing the spotlight on the machinations of the financial system and the corrosive effects that money in and all by itself has both on our societies as a whole, in our own micro-worlds and those of our acquaintances as well as our own fragile, individual psyches. And when this time comes I think that the memory of both Mr Gavras and those that stood by him in this and similar projects will be, if not exalted, then at the very least spared from the outrage of the dystopian poverty-striken masses.

Basically good, sympathetic, or at least, interesting characters, you can relate to and care for, encounter obstacles, have to struggle for a while, but ultimately find their way through an unfriendly or simply indifferent world. We all love this type of films. "Capital" is emphatically not one of those, but is nevertheless worthy of attention.

There is at least one character, however, who has not lost her moral compass, and still has some, albeit minuscule weight in the film: the wife of the main protagonist, a former economics professor, and now an ambitious CEO of a leading French bank. Her pull on her husband, however, is only marginally stronger than the one that his extended family, of apparently modest means, has on him. He has feelings for her, as well as for his parents, but those simply cannot compare in intensity to the thrill of money. He is a man who understands "the way the world functions", as he is not shy to explain when questioned. It is a game, in which, typically, rich get richer and poor get poorer, but the reverse is not impossible, as we are told, only improbable. He is cool, calculated, unemotional player, consciously going for high stakes. Just like the others, towards him often inimical characters, who he does not blame for their repugnant behaviour, although certainly would not mind occasionally smashing their heads onto hard surfaces nearby. Of course, we understand that he could not have possible been any different and still belong to the top executive branches of the financial world.

Costa Gavras made his name in the genre of international political thriller, picking his subjects to be the most promising themes for such a film at a given time. It is already telling that he chose the world of high finance, and not of politics, as the most relevant field today. Indeed, the main character is addressed always as "the president", and he is treated as such by everybody he meets. He clearly lives in an entirely different world from the majority of even western, relatively well-off humanity, and his decisions, although made explicitly and exclusively for the benefit of the few, indeed affect, thousands of ordinary mortals. The bank that he directs, and pretty much all the interiors he ever dwells in do not fall far behind many European royal palaces. His world is the world of excess, but in his book it should be unapologetically so.

There is a hint in the film of a possible difference between the old European, and the new aggressive, American business attitudes, that may exist only on the surface. American bankers that we meet maybe cannot pronounce Modigliani's name correctly, but they understand perfectly that their French counterparts are just as greedy, and motivated by the same basic predatory impulses, as they are. As the main character says on one occasion, almost defending his adversaries across the Atlantic: "They are just businessman, like us". The difference seems to be only that the French operate from the high-ceiling, well decorated, old world Parisian buildings, whereas their American partners for their machinations prefer flashy yachts and skyscrapers.

The film certainly lacks the depth and the emotion of the very best Gavras' works, such as "Z" or the "Missing", but it functions well at the level of well written, competently shot, and expertly directed financial drama. It is an insightful, if not too original, commentary on today's state of affairs which to many will ring painfully true. There are also some fairly obvious flaws: the parallel thread with the "super model" that the main hero relentlessly pursues is rather stereotypical, and her attitude towards him appears far-fetched. It would have served the story's development better if the relationship with the multi-dimensional French female employee from London's office was introduced earlier and then further developed. This could have added some intellectual and emotional depth to the main character, beyond what was this way left only sketched. These comments notwithstanding, the film presents an entertaining and informative look at the dynamics of the modern world's new nobility.

I have seen the posters. Gad Elmaleh and Costa Gavras? Well, Costa Gavras directed nobodies like Ion Caramitru, so why not a stand up comedy man? Than I have read the reviews. The world is not like that, they say.

I have watched the movie. Maybe there are a bit too many characters on screen. I can say that of all of Costa Gavras' movies I have seen so far. But the story is good. And it's the best business-themed movie I have seen.

So what I can tell you is go see the movie and find for yourself if you like it. Just keep in mind this is not a reality TV show about white collar crime. Maybe it's true that the television has a strong impact on the way audiences perceive the big screen stories.

Contact me with Questions, Comments or Suggestions ryitfork @ bitmail.ch