Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Greetings, From the 1%

The Wolf of Wall StreetDirected by Martin Scorsese
Four Stars
By Jon Fisher

Talk about a movie whose time has come. The Wolf of Wall Street is the fifth movie that Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have made together, and this end result cements the conclusion that DiCaprio is Scorsese’s new age alter-ego. In the 1970s, the surrogate was Harvey Keitel. In the late ‘70s and ‘80s, it was Robert De Niro. Scorsese flittered around with De Niro, Nicolas Cage, and Daniel Day-Lewis in the 1990s, and since the early 2000s, DiCaprio is his go-to guy. Funnily enough, it seems to have taken five films for the pair to really produce a vintage Martin Scorsese Movie. Not to say that Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed and Shutter Island aren't fine films. The Wolf of Wall Street, though, marks a return to the classic Scorsese themes of sin, temptation, and the dangers of living life without a moral centre.
The subject of the film is Jordan Belfort, based upon his experiences as chronicled in his memoir. Belfort was a stockbroker who dabbled – nay, swam neck-deep – in securities fraud in the 1980s. Scorsese’s movie follows Belfort (DiCaprio) as he starts out on Wall Street, first under the guidance of expert broker Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey – very brief but memorable performance of a drug-addled, unethical bankster) before moving into penny stocks and eventually into massive-scale securities fraud.
Belfort, with his brash arrogance, ambition for wealth, and readiness to succumb to whatever temptation presents itself to him, is a quintessential Scorsese antihero. This film does not lionize him, nor is it reductive to the harm that he caused to so many ‘little people’. There are moments of humour and wit in The Wolf of Wall Street, particularly during those sequences in which Belfort is really going to town with the debauchery. But there is an undercutting appreciation of the vigor with which Belfort approaches life, how our society rewards people with such liveliness and ambition. By the end of the film, Scorsese does make his ultimate value judgments on Belfort, and they aren't pretty. The final shot of the film is exquisite, summarizing all that has come before it, and even hammering home a couple of uncomfortable truths for the audience itself.
There’s plenty more to this film than just Belfort. The cast is replete with characters that riff to the tune of ‘do what you feel like’ that permeates the film. Aside from the brief appearance by Matthew McConaughey, there’s also the performance of Jonah Hill, Oscar nominated as Donnie Azoff, who is so good portraying a man so gutless, so self-involved, so loathsome. He’s the perfect off-sider to Belfort, and the two mistake their shared selfishness for an intimate friendship. Jean Dujardin – the French actor who gave a wonderful Academy Award-winning performance in The Artist – is terrifically entertaining as a vile Swiss banker.
As always with Scorsese, women play a vital role in the overall feel of his film. Belfort discards his wife early in the piece in exchange for the stunningly beautiful Naomi (Margot Robbie), a trophy wife for a man with limitless wealth. Their relationship inevitably sours and fades, primarily because Belfort, like most of Scorsese’s antiheroes, is stricken with a virgin-whore complex. Belfort oscillates between idolizing Naomi for her beauty and grace, to loathing her for her emotional and sexual complexity.
The Wolf of Wall Street is not about a kind person. It follows the deeds of a pack of men (and they are all men here) that have drank the Kool-Aid, succumbed to the pursuit of wealth above all else, and who gleefully and hedonistically enjoy themselves while preying on the weak. This is not a pleasant aspect of human nature, and Martin Scorsese doesn't attempt to bring about a happy ending. He explores it, makes no apology or explanation for it, and acknowledges it as a horrid inevitability of human existence.  

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