Margin Call and the Death of a Dog

Given the financial death knells sounding in J.C. Chandor’s recent film Margin Call, it's surprising, to say the least, that the saddest part of the film is the death of a stockbroker’s Labrador retriever. Having grown up with two black Labrador retrievers, I sympathized with his plight; I suspect that the American film-going audience at large also sympathized. After all, Hollywood didn’t produce Marley & Me just for shits and giggles; people love to watch films in which pets die and then cry about it afterward. So perhaps that aspect of Margin Call was understandable. Throw in a dying dog and garner everyone’s sympathy.

However, I feel as if dying pets are (at least now—given their clichéd run in popular culture) a rather crass, childish way to approach underlying issues of human mortality. Indeed, the life and death of Old Yeller functions as a learning device for Travis in Old Yeller, the granddaddy of all dying/dead pet films. However, that childish device serves no ostensible purpose in Margin Call, something that should alert the viewer to the underlying issues that the film is exploring.

For one, it’s worth taking into consideration that Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey) explains to Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) early on in the film that he’s been spending $1,000 per day to even keep the dog alive. Emerson, of course, had walked into Rogers’s office and caught him at a teary moment. As Rogers explains his emotions, Emerson seems entirely detached from the situation—his body language speaks for itself. He seems so uncomfortable with the entire idea of the dying dog that it looks as if he's not even listening.

That lack of empathy on the part of Emerson, however, skews the audience away from the important point the film is making: this financial executive (or however you want to term his position—I don't recall the particulars) is spending $1,000 per day on a dog. Granted, given the resources, people will go pretty far to save their pets. In fact, I’m personally familiar with the absurdity of the situation; my family's dog Otis ended up with pretty serious case of melanoma on one of his paws. Because we caught the cancer early, the paw was still operable and Otis is alive today. I bring up my own dog to make the point that I can appreciate Rogers’s desperation to save his dog at any financial cost. (After all, removing melanoma from a dog’s paw is not inexpensive.)

But that said, there are limits that should be placed on canine medical practices. My parents, for example, have stated that they won’t operate again if further cancer appears on Otis. He’s an old dog—11 years old—and it would do him no good to have a cast on his paw at this point in his life. But not only that, it also would do us no good as a family—particularly in a moral sense. I don’t mean “moral” in the sense that it’s wrong for the dog (which it might be, anyway), but rather in that we would simply be confounding our understanding of mortality at that point. When you’re putting as much effort into saving the life of a dog as you’d put into saving the life of, say, your grandmother, then a moral disparity emerges. How do we value the life of a dog versus that of a human?

For me, the contentious issue that arises out of that scene between Rogers and Emerson is that humanity seems to play second banana to the dog world in Margin Call. A second scene—this one between Rogers and his ex-wife—further illuminates the second banana-hood of humanity. Digging a grave for his dead dog in front yard of what was once his house, Rogers is the embodiment of pity itself…but not due to the death of his beloved dog or the failure of his marriage, but rather because, from his point of view, his own personal problems have escalated into the provinces of high tragedy.

That, of course, is a absurd notion, given the fact that earlier that day Rogers helped orchestrate an exodus of bad investments, the effects of which, looking to the financial crisis of 2008 and its repercussions, will change the lives of millions of people. How does that really compare to a dead dog and a divorce? Reflecting on the film, I have no sympathy for Rogers; any sympathetic feeling I had for him was an illusion, a phantom of a feeling. Sure, his dog died, but that doesn’t mean he’s any better than the rest of the characters in the film.