I might have been sleeping under a rock when both Cairo Time (2011, director Ruba Nadda) and
Margin Call (2010, director J. C.
Chandor) came out. I say this because I have no recollection of hearing
anything about either movie. Ever.
As it often happens between good movies and me, I stumbled upon these
two quite accidentally, on days when my mood exactly matched what they could
offer (my one psychic power?). What do they have in common? Besides being good,
hardly anything at all. One takes place in Cairo and is understated; the other
takes place in Wall Street and is much more pretentious. But both are elegant
movies, with actors that are grown up people (not that there is anything wrong
with not being grown up), and both remind us of how fast things can change.
Cairo Time tells the story of budding feelings between a wife,
who is supposed to meet her UN-employee husband in Cairo, and a former
colleague of her spouse, who is entrusted with keeping her company when the
husband is delayed. Think Before Sunrise
with older, less high-strung characters (I love Before Sunrise and its sequel Before
Sunset nonetheless) with little to prove and a certain self-assuredness that
makes the protagonists pleasant to follow. An always-chic Patricia Clarkson plays Juliette, a stylish
and discreet magazine writer opposite a very charming Alexander Siddig (Tareq).
They are our tour guides through an expertly shot Egypt, filmed from the
vantage point of hotel balconies, pyramid-front gardens, a boat on the Nile, and
wedding-party dance floors. This is one of those films to savor while it lasts,
like a fine meal in which the ambiance, the music, and the company all
contribute to the experience (if only I could have Juliette's turquoise dress!). In sum, getting to the end is not really the goal here.
In the process, we see the characters go from strangers to soul mates through
little more than piercing stares (if we can call those “little.”) Cairo
Time looks the way an elegant book reads, and its open, larger-than-life spaces
seem to remind us to breath and take in the views.
Margin Call is claustrophobic in comparison. Quite literally so.
The story unfolds in the hermetically sealed offices of Wall Street on the
verge of the economic crisis of 2008. It is a movie about cause and effect,
about the house of cards that financial, rather than production-based economies
have become, and about the domino effect that results from sometimes single but
far-reaching actions. But it is also a movie about responsibility, yours and
mine (Wall Street alone is too easy a target) and our part in constructing the
illusory sense that we live “within our means.”
My favorite quote from the movie is also a lesson (albeit a
moralist one – but again which lesson isn’t a bit that way?) spelled out with
great simplicity. Here a boss talks back to his risk management analyst when
the latter shows concern for the “real people” who are about to wake up to the
beginning of a market collapse:
If you really want to do this with
your life you have to believe that you're necessary, and you are. People want
to live like this with their cars and their big f** houses they can't even pay
for - then you're necessary. The only reason people get to continue living like
kings is because we've got our fingers on the scales and we're tipping in their
favor. I take my hand off, well then the whole world gets really f** fair
really f** quick, and nobody actually wants that. They say they do, but they
really don't. They want what we have to give but they also want to play
innocent and pretend they have no idea where it actually came from; and that's
more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow…
Find among the cast the great Jeremy
Irons, a convincing Kevin Spacey, and a circumspect Demi Moore.
