3 Coked-Out-Tribal-Wall-Street-Investors out of 4
This is not a movie for the faint of heart. It’s not a movie for people who don’t like watching the brutality of man. It’s not a movie for anyone who’s been swindled by a financial goon masquerading as a messiah. This is not movie for the meek, and it’s certainly not for those who stand against drug addiction.
In fact, much of Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio’s cocaine-fuelled biopic isn’t really a movie at all. It’s a call to action and a cry for revolution marketed as a film about sex, drugs, money, and hookers.
Starring as investment banker Jordan Belfort, DiCaprio’s performance consists of four parts: charming onscreen acting; humorous fourth-wall breaking exposition; witty voice-over narration; and mindlessly binging on coke, Quaaludes, and hookers. DiCaprio’s career has marked many notable collaborations with Scorsese, but The Wolf of Wall Street will be remembered as the time when DiCaprio lost his mind onscreen and we loved him for every minute of it.
We’re first introduced to a shy, but head-strong Belfort entering a world of financial lions, tigers, and bears. Belfort’s there to make money for himself, and to make money for other people.
Wall Street types aren’t portrayed as human, but as brutish, vulgar, animal tribesmen. Their vernacular consists of curses and hateful language. They deal in violence and high priced escorts, in high cash bonds and stock options.
They’re really not respectable people at all, and the fact that Belmont thrives in the high-strung Wall Street ecosystem reveals his own passionate instability.
A brief scene between Belfort and one-scene-madman Mark Hanna (played by Matthew McConaughey, chewing the screen to bits) reveals the weapons that Belfort will spend the rest of his career utilizing. I’ll spare the vivid details, but I’ll say that cocaine is one of them, and swindling people out of money is another.
Scorsese’s direction is flawless; the audience would be forgiven for thinking that they’re watching a movie about Wall Street finances, yet the truth is that Marty’s directed another classic mobster flick. The people we see are impure, and hilariously excessive – decadent is too weak a word to describe the collective money-money-money attitudes that all of Belfort’s crew exhibit.
Praise must be given to the band of actors who serve as Belfort’s lovably hateful crew of charismatic losers. As viewers, the audience understands why goons work for Belfort’s Stratton Oakmont investment company. We understand why Jonah Hill’s character, Donnie Azoff – a middle class furniture salesmen trying too hard to be a WASP – shines under Belmont’s rule. We know what drives weakness to strength. What we don’t immediately recognize is that Scorsese is blaming society for perpetuating the deceit of the American Dream.
Indeed, Scorsese’s loudest dissatisfied groan comes at the expense of the audience’s complacency.
“How are you people letting this slide? Why aren’t you doing anything to stop these terrible, self-centred brutes? What’s wrong with you guys, can’t you see how terrible this all is?” we can hear him bellow.
Marty’s camera finds fault with both his characters and his audience. Scenes of excess and extravagant immodesty drag on for just a little too long. We see the crew do drugs just a little too much. DiCaprio’s Belmont stuns us just a little too often. It’s uncomfortable, but the horrifying truth is that the audience is drawn to these loathsome people and the loathsome things they do thanks to years of cultural conditioning.
The Wolf of Wall Street has come under heavy scrutiny for glorifying the decadence and shallow-mindedness of the 21st century North American, but these critics miss the point of the movie. In a culture driven by get-rich-quick stories and a more-money-more-power mentality, Scorsese shows us exactly what happens when we idolize and deify bad men, bad people, bad things, and above all, cash.
Jordan Belfort gets what’s coming to him, but like all reformed mobsters, we can hear how much he yearns for his old life. His life of sobriety is marked with scorn at the people who made him get clean and, right until the last horrifying moment, we know that he’d return to scamming people out of large amounts of capital if he had the chance.
There’s a scene where Belfort attempts to resolve a difficult situation while high on methaqualone. We see him struggle to move and form coherent thoughts despite his mind operating at an optimal, almost peak level. I believe that Scorsese feels much of the civilized world is operating in a similar mindset.
We watch events unfold in slow motion thinking that there’s nothing we can do in the moment to stop the earth from spinning. The truth isn’t that there’s nothing we can do to stop bad people and bad things; the truth is that we’re already too late.
“You didn’t start the fire,” Scorsese reasons. “But you watched it burn.”