If anything can shape the public’s understanding of the complexities of the recent housing bubble and global financial crisis, it’s a Hollywood movie.

Together with its all-star cast, 2015’s blockbuster “The Big Short”—based on the bestselling book of the same name by Michael Lewis —has been nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. That’s a pretty good showing for a film with a plot driven by credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations.

The film has provoked an intense discussion of whether arcane mortgage-backed securities were the primary driver of the crisis as opposed to broader economic forces, and whether those responsible were adequately punished. To face these issues head on, the movie’s director Adam McKay recently joined a couple of economics experts, a journalist who worked on the movie, and one of the people behind a real-life short portrayed in the film at a Brookings Institution event.

The big question: Is the movie’s version an effective way to explain the wrenching financial crisis to the public? Below are some of the key points from the conversation, and you can watch the full event video here.





Movies have incredible power to create a narrative

“I think everyone who has seen the movie can agree that it is engaging and clever … but we know that in our society, movies can have incredible power in creating a narrative,” said David Wessel, director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at Brookings. “We know that we went through something devastating, and we know that there will be policy choices made, and sometimes policy choices will be made by politicians who get their information more from movies than from Brookings white papers, so we have to worry about that,” he said.