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Surviving a German Trading Floor, However Ruefully
‘Master of the Universe,’ a Documentary About Stock Trading
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
In “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort cuts short an explanation of his work, because, he says, we probably couldn’t follow the details.“Master of the Universe” attempts that explanation but offers a sobering antidote to irrational exuberance and a psychological case study in the financier’s mind-set. This indefatigable tell-all documentary from Marc Bauder cedes the floor to Rainer Voss, a German ex-trader who tells us with clarity about how it all works.
Mr. Voss delivers his dispatches from a ghostly trading floor in an empty Frankfurt high-rise as if he were an archaeologist recounting the fall of a civilization. With Teutonic analysis and a former Young Turk’s prerogative, he bestows a sweeping lowdown: the liberalization in the German banking industry, the fine line between salesmanship and malfeasance, a step-by-step for strong-arming a country like Greece, the nursery school shared by Deutsche Bank families.
The camera pans restlessly, showing us steely-gray lattice views of the business district and cutting away to a big-screen television showing congressional testimony on the financial crisis from the United States. Mr. Voss speaks calmly, and not without some nostalgia, but betraying frustration with the social conformity and sacrifice of his profession. He talks around the deepest wound, an evident distance from his family because of his long hours.
Mr. Bauder’s film works more through the steady accumulation of knowledge than, say, the culture-jamming dissections of the German filmmaker Harun Farocki (“How to Live in the German Federal Republic”). His visual scheme, wrapped in a murmuring electronic score, doesn’t escape monotony. But he touches on the equally hermetic and vulgar aura surrounding such blinkered pursuit of wealth. Mr. Voss’s metaphors pile up helplessly: Finance is like being in the army, like catching a virus and as hard to grasp as quantum particles. The film in which he appears is a vertiginous look inside the bubble behind the financial bubble, with no end in sight.
CreditAutlook Filmsales
‘Master of the Universe,’ a Documentary About Stock Trading
By NICOLAS RAPOLD
In “The Wolf of Wall Street,” Jordan Belfort cuts short an explanation of his work, because, he says, we probably couldn’t follow the details.“Master of the Universe” attempts that explanation but offers a sobering antidote to irrational exuberance and a psychological case study in the financier’s mind-set. This indefatigable tell-all documentary from Marc Bauder cedes the floor to Rainer Voss, a German ex-trader who tells us with clarity about how it all works.
Mr. Voss delivers his dispatches from a ghostly trading floor in an empty Frankfurt high-rise as if he were an archaeologist recounting the fall of a civilization. With Teutonic analysis and a former Young Turk’s prerogative, he bestows a sweeping lowdown: the liberalization in the German banking industry, the fine line between salesmanship and malfeasance, a step-by-step for strong-arming a country like Greece, the nursery school shared by Deutsche Bank families.
The camera pans restlessly, showing us steely-gray lattice views of the business district and cutting away to a big-screen television showing congressional testimony on the financial crisis from the United States. Mr. Voss speaks calmly, and not without some nostalgia, but betraying frustration with the social conformity and sacrifice of his profession. He talks around the deepest wound, an evident distance from his family because of his long hours.
Mr. Bauder’s film works more through the steady accumulation of knowledge than, say, the culture-jamming dissections of the German filmmaker Harun Farocki (“How to Live in the German Federal Republic”). His visual scheme, wrapped in a murmuring electronic score, doesn’t escape monotony. But he touches on the equally hermetic and vulgar aura surrounding such blinkered pursuit of wealth. Mr. Voss’s metaphors pile up helplessly: Finance is like being in the army, like catching a virus and as hard to grasp as quantum particles. The film in which he appears is a vertiginous look inside the bubble behind the financial bubble, with no end in sight.