Symbolism with the Dog?
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Bozohead — 14 years ago(March 31, 2012 07:45 AM)
Its a very misunderstood scene. Spacey's character is upset about his dog's illness while in the middle of a major downturn and sacking half his department. He is cold and indifferent to the problems of people and cares more about his dog than he does humans.
So at first on a shallow level he is villainous wall street type but later on he resists the unscrupulous and harmful dumping of toxic assets on a practical and moral level.
Spacey's character represented old Wall Street. Tough, mean, cold hearted and motivated to make money but yet with principles and ethics.
I really liked the Sam Rogers character and the way Spacey played him. He was not a sympathetic character, a bleeding heart type or the "good guy" but he was also the guy who had done 34 years work towards the company he cared about his work, his reputation rather than just money. Not that he was against making lots of money or he didn't like what he did. -
lynda618 — 13 years ago(May 11, 2012 03:29 PM)
I think that whole scene, despite coming at the end of the movie, gave a great exposition about Sam's life. But I have a questionwhen he asked about "Sammy" (obviously his son, whom he did not have frequent contact with), what was it his wife said, and what did it refer to?
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vanToom — 13 years ago(July 08, 2012 02:47 PM)
Nobody remembers Gordon Gekko giving Bud Fox the advice: "If you need a friend, get yourself a dog."? Well - here it is. Sam's dog is a straight reference to "Wall Street" and it means that today in "Margin Call" there are literally no friends left. All characters shown have no social life, no family, no friends. All they're talking about is money, how to make it, how to spend it. It's their only reason to live. All these dialogue about "These people outside, they don't know whats going on" is simply to illustrate that "Margin Call"-Characters have not the slightest connection to people around them at all. They don't care about feelings, they don't care about ethics. They're just talking about abstracts. When Sam's dog is buried at the end of the film, it is chrystal clear that the last friend has gone. There's nothing more left worth living for - except money. The characters in "Margin Call" are near to the algorithms they use for their business - no emotions, no feelings, they're reduced to figures dealing with money. Their tragic is that money has little to do with the entire human life.
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gary-horsman — 13 years ago(February 04, 2013 07:15 PM)
This one is easy to miss. I missed it too the first several times I watched. It really doesn't have as much to do with the dog as much as the act of digging.
In the second to last scene, John Tuld (Jeremy Irons) is trying to convince Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) that what he'd done to sell off all the company's toxic assets to unsuspecting buyers was in the end a necessary and normal course of human affairs.
John Tuld: "You're one of the luckiest guys in the world, Sam. You could have been digging ditches all these years."
Sam Rogers: "That's true. And if I had, at least there'd be some holes in the ground to show for it."
The final scene is bookended with the sound of Rogers digging a grave for his recently deceased dog at his previously owned home, now occupied by his ex-wife, over a black screen.
The act of digging the grave mirrors the act of his previous occupation, digging ditches. And though he didn't make as much money as a ditch digger, in Rogers' mind, it was an honorable thing to do. By contast, moving around numbers in an opaque manner, creating and destroying wealth at the stroke of a key is not work. It is not noble.
And remember at this point, Rogers is racked with guilt with what he had just done. The act of digging symbolizes his desire to return to a place where he had something tangible to show for his efforts. As well, it is a kind of penance, not unlike what a prisoner, paying for his crimes, would carry out. He is seeking a type of redemption to atone for the sins he's committed with a physical act that has so much symbolic power.
The dead dog provides for Rogers' character a plot vehicle through which he can carry out this act of contrition and provide a powerful visual symbol to underline the guilt he feels for launching a financial crisis that would hurt millions of regular Americans for years to come. -
britishfella — 12 years ago(November 16, 2013 08:11 PM)
Excellent analysis with which I concur.
The trouble with symbolism indeed, the reason why many filmmakers hate it is that almost anything can be read it. The idea of the dying dog representing America, of its $1000 a day costs mirroring the country's drainage of wealth and so forth it's neat, but I don't think that's what the director was going for.
Rather, as gary-horsman says, the clearest hint to the symbolism was the conversation between Tuld and Rogers. This had already been set up by Tucci's character speaking of the value of his bridge. A little earlier in the movie, Sullivan asks Rogers if he'd told his son about the forthcoming crisis; there's a beat, and Spacey suddenly realises he hadn't even considered his son. Decades of work, a divorce, a son he can't even contemplate, a vocation that is spiritually bankrupt; digging the hole 'leaves something to show' for something of value. But the manic and continuous digging that goes on throughout the credits would suggest it's a desperate and hollow gesture, merely paying penance. -
JDuu — 13 years ago(March 01, 2013 12:43 PM)
I would infer from Sam's line earlier in the film about it "costing a thousand dollars a day" to keep his dog alive is a metaphor for the company. Until now they had "somehow" managed to keep it afloat over the last two weeks, regarding stepping over the ratios, but had finally reached breaking point.
Same as with the dog, Sam has been throwing money at the problem to make it go away but in the long term he knows that it can't last and the dog will inevitably die.
He then symbolically buries it as the company folds or is irrecoverably damaged following the events of that day's trading. -
susanleslie2 — 12 years ago(June 18, 2013 12:56 PM)
I took the very last scene as a literal re-enactment of Rogers's day:
He knows where the bodies are buried because he had a major role that day in burying them.
Good film. Really liked it. Great cast and acting. -
cenan-gumus — 12 years ago(November 15, 2013 12:07 AM)
I think the dog is a metaphor for markets. And the tumor growing in her represents leveraged products. We hear that the dog is very ill the day before the fire sale and Sam burries the dog at the end of the movie.
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db-155 — 12 years ago(December 20, 2013 05:13 AM)
To me the dog motif can be seen most clearly as a repetition of the Lurie character's work with dogs in J.M. Coetzee's "Disgrace", a Booker Prize winner I am sure the scriptwriter would have read. But even if they hadn't there is a long history of animals being a way to stage a human character's ethics outside the political dimensions of the plot.
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Bree_33 — 11 years ago(September 24, 2014 03:00 PM)
A very insightful thread, thanks guys!
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JeffAtlanta2004 — 11 years ago(April 02, 2015 10:07 AM)
This is one of those situations where a cigar is just a cigar.
It's a huge stretch to say that the use of the dog was symbolism. Sam was just a miserable soul and the unconditional love of his dog made it his only friend.
