Margin Call : Symbolism with the Dog?

The subplot with Sam Roger's dog is confusing - are we supposed to infer that he cares more about this dog then he does all the people his firm is/will be screwing?

Or is it that this cold, calculating company man's soft center has been crushed finally even after surviving a divorce, being passed over for promotion by younger players, and experiencing his division getting slashed and rebuilt repeatedly?

No pun, but throw us a bone here. Paul Bettany's scene shaving in the bathroom with the other analyst shows us more about his character, stamina, his emotional investment in the implosion happening around him then both of Spacey's longer scenes about the dog.

Sam had given his life to that firm. 34 years, as he keeps saying.
He's separated from his wife. We see him trying to sleep in his office.
He fires most of his people and then has to come out upbeat and motivational.
He is forced by his bosses to do something he finds unconscionable.
We're seeing that although he has the money, his life is miserable.

The only thing he has of worth is his relationship with his dog.

Then the dog dies and he has nothing. He is left alone, digging a hole in the middle of the night to bury the only bit of warmth and humanity he had left.

What's the metaphor or symbolism?
After 34 years of working in that job, that is what you become.
He even goes to Jeremy Irons begging to be let go from the firm, to which Irons demands another 2 years at least from him.
But the real symbolism is that finance creates or builds nothing. It is a void of emptiness and Spacey's character symbolised that.

Contrast that with Stanley Tucci's piece about building a bridge that served two communities; back when he did something constructive with his life, something he'd like to get back to.

i don't see a need to even try to explain it after this guy. hit it right out of the park. thanks.

Beautifully put. And the reason we loved the movie!

Ditto.

Fantastic reply. Unfortunately, many of us probably know people like this. There are many in the federal sector who mirror Spacey's character's problems.

This reply is excellent. I would offer 2 additions:
1. "If you need a friend, get a dog," was for decades a standard line among traders on Wall Street. Michael Douglas's character, Gordon Gekko, uses the line with Charlie Sheen's character, Bud Fox, in the film Wall Street. Clearly, the dog is Sam Rogers' only friend (although Will Emerson is at least a loyal subordinate, which is something).
2. In the second-to-last scene, John Tuld tries to cheer Sam up by suggesting that securities trading is at least better than some things Sam could have done, such as spending his life ditch digging; Sam replies, "If I had, at least there would be some holes in the ground to show for it." The film cuts directly from that scene to the shot of Sam digging a hole.

Superbly analysed - bravo!

Perfect post!

da job is basically punishin sam's soul like da illness is punishin his dog so he begz 2 be let go much da dog is prolly beggin 2 be put down 2 end his sufferin. in da end, sam is denied resignation so he decides 2 bury his soul (dog) be4 in con't his job for at least another 2 yrz.

I live, I love, I slay, and I'm content

What did you just say?

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Eh????

I think the dog represents Sam Roger himself. He basically lost everything that was alive in him. At the end he is digging the grave for himself, he is continuing digging the same grave he has been digging for the past 34 years at the firm.

My 2 cents

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Paul Bettany's scene shaving in the bathroom

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Huh?

Please help me out here. Was that really Will and I didn't recognize him?

I thought that was some nameless trader who had just arrived, doing his normal early morning routine not any of the principal characters who had been up most of the night. (I've seen employees who wanted to "save time" or "get in early" or "not create a mess in their apartment" or "not wake their S.O." or "go to the gym first" or "ride a bicycle to work" do their whole morning routine including not just shaving but showering and dressing etc. at the office. So my understanding of what the movie showed seemed normal to me.)

It was Simon Baker's character. Penn Bagdley's character says "you're gonna fire me", indicating it's Baker's character. Also it looks like Baker ;)

Stop looking at me swan!

It wasn't Paul Bettany/Will Emerson who was shaving but Simon Baker/Jared Cohen.

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I think it was his emotional escape. I think he truly cared about the dog, we see this in the way he hugged it at the vet. However I also think it was his way of letting his emotions out.

In the early part of the movie he mentions his dog while another character is talking about the layoffs. It makes him appear insensitive because here are people with families who are getting laid off while he's upset about his dog. However as we learn more about him it becomes obvious that his dog is his escape from the reality around him. He even mentions that he doesn't wanna be part of his bosses conversations because not knowing everything that goes on is what allowed him to stay there for soo long. So it's his safe haven or coping mechanismfrom work, his estranged family, stress, etc

Also his sorrow for his dog is what allows him to express sorrow for what is going on around him. It's safe to say that in his position he has had to show himself to his subordinates as being tough, stoic, merciless, and strong. So is he crying because his dog is dying? Yes. But is he also crying because of his sadness in his personal life and the goings on of his career? Yes. Now if a subordinate walked in and found him crying, would he say he's crying because his family life is trash, and he just had to fire 80% of his staff? Or is he going to tell the subordinate who has to have a significant level of fear and respect for him that he's crying about his dog? It looks more ruthless and cutthroat to let people believe that you could care less about your ex-wife and your employees. So in the end it gives him that look of a cold blooded killer who has a soft spot for kittensyou're not a kitten so you're a potential target at any given time. And lets face it, that career he is in depends on appearing ruthless and cutthroat

mic7440 has it exactly right. An outlet for his sadness with the state off the company and his colleagues, and what his career has come to.

The Dog - a symbol of American citizens, just of the middle class for the entire Western world order. ^)

I can go along with the symbolism that people have written about here but I saw it as concrete and not symbolic. People lose pets everyday, why not a company bigwig. Also the people losing their jobs around him as his dog dies: which event was more common in his life? People losing their jobs. He'd been with the company 34 years and lived through this many times. In his position it doesn't pay to get attached to staff and indeed we see how detached his character is from lots of people around him including his family. It's easy to be attached to a pet and what that dog represented for him. Sam (Spacey) was always walking the fine line between ruthlessness and common humanity as a character in the film. He also qualified, in some ways, to be the sort of hypocrite that Will (Bettany) was speaking of when describing the normal people.

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I don't know what scares me the most. The bankers of this world, or the people on this board who can't grasp why Spacey's character would cry over his dog, the only thing he had left in the world that he cared about.

I agree with the scene showing how empty Sam's life was.
I actually expected him in an end scene where he jumps from the building. Bettany indicates that kind of jump while he's alone with Quinto and Badgley on top of the building.
I really expected, that Sam would jump. He had no wife, no dog, no son I think (because he only gets his information about him through his ex wife) and is broke because of the dog's operations. So he has to keep going in an enterprise, which is about to make an action he despises for money he doesn't really have any use for.

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.

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?

He asked how his son made out (he also seemed to be some kind of financial investor) and his ex-wife said something like "it was a rough day but he survived).

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.

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.

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.

Well put, britishfella.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I think the ending scene was there to show that you can be married to the money.

A very insightful thread, thanks guys!

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Spacey's character loved his work, his career, his belief in what he was doing. All that was dying.

Get the image of the dog now?

And that was Simon Baker shaving, not Bettany.

Great threat.
In fact it confirmed things i suspected.
Reading this the film grows more for me.

Hmm. I hope you're not too threatened.

Ha ha.
Sorry for my mistake.

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.

it wasn't unconditional, he had to feed him.

i mostly will not be able to answer your reply, since marissa mayer hacked my email, no notification