Mahanagar to Margin Call: How mass layoffs have been depicted on screen

In India, filmmakers have mostly looked at impact of mass firings on blue-collar workers

In one of the most poignant sequences of the 2011 film Margin Call, Kevin Spacey’s character Sam Rogers storms out of his cabin and heads over to meet the firm’s chief executive officer John Tuld, played by Jeremy Irons. On his way up, Rogers bumps into several employees heading out boxes in hand, their contracts terminated.

By the time he reaches the lavish dining hall at the top of the Manhattan skyscraper where Tuld is quietly having his lunch, looking over the city, Rogers has lost some steam. When Rogers confronts Tuld about the mass layoff that he had to oversee, the latter simply says, “It’s just money. It’s made up.” Referring to the repetitive nature of financial crises and the resultant layoffs, the CEO notes that while there might be “more of us now”, the percentage of “fat cats and hungry dogs” remains the same.

The film, without naming the firm, recounts a 24-hour period at a large Wall Street investment bank during the initial stages of the financial crisis of 2007-08. We see entire floors losing their jobs, top CEOs making morally dubious but pragmatic decisions to save the firm from further harm, and colleagues dealing with either guilt or anger, depending on which side of the door they find themselves.

One of the most underrated films about the 2008 recession, Marginal Call is one of the several that provide a glimpse into the effects sheer financial numbers can have on human lives. The tight self-contained plot, centred firmly on the process and consequences of layoffs in a different form, helps us connect with the humans behind the now much-mythologised financial crash.

As firms across sectors find themselves in the middle of yet another round of mass layoffs in 2023, cinema and TV shows provide a glimpse into the unseen aspects of the hire and fire culture.

There’s also Up in the Air (2009), an American comedy-drama film directed by Jason Reitman and starring George Clooney as the lead character Ryan Bingham, who works for a human resources consultancy firm specialising in employment-termination assistance. His work constantly takes him around the country, conducting layoffs on behalf of employers. While the film is centred on a romantic plot, it also provides a glimpse into the seemingly mechanical process of firing. Clooney’s Bingham, while encountering a few hilarious firing situations, is also seen to be acutely aware of his role as the company’s razor — sharp and precise in severance and struggling to maintain a cold metallic exterior.

Tuld’s observation of the repetitive and periodic nature of layoffs in the American economy also has implications for the representation of layoffs in film and TV. The US’s familiarity with mass layoffs, especially in the context of major corporate firings on Wall Street or amongst the Big Tech firms, explains the plethora of instances where pop cultural narratives addressed these issues. While films and TV series like The Big Short and Industry come to mind as ready examples, there are other lesser-known scenarios too. Both Clark Kent (Superman) and Peter Parker (Spiderman) lost their jobs in mass layoffs at different points in their comic-book narratives.

The Family Man, The Simpsons, as well as Rick and Morty have made snide but meaningful references to mass layoffs. In the second season of the latter, for instance, Rick refers to but avoids visiting a dystopian alternative reality where employees are laid off en masse every day and hired back the very next day with a promise of long-term employment, which never gets fulfilled.

In India, layoffs have been represented in quite different ways — mostly rooted in the representation of the working class. Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘Angry Young Man’ tackles with worker strikes and mass firing several times in films like Laawaris (1981), Kaala Patthar (1979), and Trishul (1978). In Namak Haram (1973), Bachchan and Rajesh Khanna lit up the screen as they negotiated dominant corporate practices through the travails of their close friendship.

Two Doordarshan serials from the 1990s — Shanti and Swabhimaan — also touched on downsizing, but the mentions were cursory and remained locked within a top-down view.

Most notably, Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (1963) and Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta 71 (1972) both hint at but ultimately glance past the issue of mass layoffs in factories and private sector jobs, in service of other central themes like the emancipation of modern working women, and the disillusionment of Bengali youth across decades.

With mass layoffs now becoming common amongst Indian companies as well as the India branches of MNCs, the association of losing employment en masse is no longer restricted to blue-collar jobs. It would be interesting to see how Indian filmmakers tackle this topic going forward.