Summary:
The rise and fall of Jordan Belfort, a criminal Wall Street stocker broker.
My Thoughts:
“Every person around here, they want to get rich and they want to get rich quickly. They all want something for nothing.”
“There was this one time I was selling pot to this Amish dude. You know those guys who got like the beard with, like, no mustache or some bullsh*t.” Well, he says that he only wants to make furniture.”
“I don’t understand.”
“What the f*ck are you talking about?”
“I’m not putting words in your mouth or nothing, but you just said that everybody wants to get rich.”
“Holy f*ck. You did just say that.”
“What the f*ck are you talking about?”
“Yeah, like Buddhists. They don’t give a sh*t about money. They’re wrapped in sheets. They’re not buying sh*t.”
“I’m not talking about Buddhists or Amish. I’m talking about normal people, working-class everyday people. Everyone wants to get rich. Am I crazy?”
“There’s no such thing as an Amish Buddhist. I’m pretty f*cking sure.”
“There could be.”
“Do you guys not want to make money?”
“I want to make money!”
“The Year I Turned Twenty-Six, as the Head of My Own Brokerage Firm, I made $49 Million, Which Really Pissed Me Off Because It Was Three Shy of a Million a Week.”
I don’t necessarily think that Scorsese’s “Wolf of Wall Street” is the best film he’s ever made, in fact, I’m sure plenty of cinephiles would jump down my throat for even suggesting that “Wolf” is better than “Goodfellas”, but as far as personal preference goes, this is my favorite Scorsese film. All of Scorsese’s movies are incredibly watchable; it’s just easy to throw one of his films on and get swept up in the world he creates for you, be it 1870s high society New York (“The Age of Innocence”), the modern day crime-ridden streets Boston (“The Departed”), or a Parisian train station in the 1930s (“Hugo”). No matter what kind of film he makes, Scorsese brings his masterful direction to these stories in a way that simply brings those worlds to life, and this film, “The Wolf of Wall Street”, is perhaps his most insane offering to date; the parties Jordan Belfort hosts are wilder than those attended by Marcello Rubini (“8 ½”), he consumes more drugs than Hunter S. Thompson (“Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas”), and he gets into more debauchery than Loki the God of Mischief, and those reasons are exactly why I love it as much as I do.
“The Wolf of Wall Street” is a lengthy film, and it watches like a great lengthy novel reads. Like any great lengthy novel, you sort of get wrapped up in the long passages and fall into a rhythm that the certain scenes offer. Before I even popped in this disk, I anticipated the Lemon Quaalude scene; I couldn’t wait to see Jonah Hill (“Superbad”) with his waspy glasses and big buckteeth; I was itching to see those lengthy monologues and hysterical bits of overlapping dialogue. I’ve seen “The Wolf of Wall Street” more than I have any other Scorsese film, and as much as I like the world building in all of Scorsese’s worlds, it’s this one that is the easiest to fall into, and it’s also the most alluring, because, as the scene at the top tells us, everybody wants to be rich. Sure, you may say you don’t want it, but what sort of person doesn’t look at this lifestyle- the incredible cars, the fancy houses, the gorgeous wife, the general extreme excess- what sort of person says they don’t want a taste of that? A saint or a liar, that’s who. I haven’t met many saints in my day, but I’ve met my fair share of liars.
The thing that this film does so well is that it shows us both the wonders of excess and the horrors in a way that is wholly entertaining from start to finish. We’ve seen countless stories of ‘the rise and fall of (_____),’ but you haven’t seen a film like this. Whoever it is that you want to throw into that blank, the basic storyline is the same: a person finds wealth or fame or power, it gets the best of them, and their world starts to fall apart. The thing that I like about this film is that it’s pretty honest about how far into the depths of depravity Belfort really goes before his life starts to fall apart, and even when it does fall apart, Belfort is still someone that a lot of people look up to, and that right there helps to illustrates the brokenness of our American justice system, and even the American dream. We, as Americans, neigh, as human beings, naturally want things; greed is in human nature, and this film illustrates that, when that greed is allowed to run rampant, there are consequences, but I’d be willing to venture to guess many of us would be willing to pay the same price as Belfort in exchange for a taste of his wealth. It might not be the right or moral thing to admit, but I think that Scorsese knows full well that the everyman dreams of acquiring enough wealth to chuck fistfuls of cash around like its nothing. We all want a little bit of what Belfort got, even if he is a bit despicable.
“There’s No Nobility in Poverty. I’ve Been a Poor Man, and I’ve Been a Rich Man. And I Choose Rich Every F*cking Time.”
When we start this film, Belfort (Leonardo DeCaprio, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) is an everyman, just looking to make a small fortune on Wall Street. He makes a quick buck under the tutelage of Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey, “Interstellar”), but he doesn’t really break out of the middle class until after he starts to really break the rules and take advantage of people. Belfort’s character, in the beginning, is rather sympathetic and likeable; it’s not until after he’s swallowed by his own greed that the money and drugs start to take control of his life that he starts to become despicable. That scene with Hanna gives us our first toe in the pool of the craziness before we really dive in. It sets the tone, and it also works as a kind of foreshadowing for what Belfort’s character will become in a short time.
The film’s pacing in the first act moves quickly, using many of the techniques Scorsese has perfected in his biographical films. He implements voiceovers overtop of everyday interactions to move the pacing along, in during those voiceovers, Scorsese also pulls back the wool from the world of Wall Street. Much like the voiceovers in “Casino” or “Goodfellas” reveal how the worlds of gangsters work, the voiceovers in this film details how penny stocks and stock trading works, so that we, the viewers, know just enough that we’re not left in the dark as the criminal acts begin.
By the second act, Jordan’s character has become less sympathetic, primarily because of the way he leaves his wife Teresa (Cristin Milioti, “Sleepwalk with Me”) for Naomi (Margot Robbie, “I, Tonya”) without hesitation. At the same time, Scorsese doesn’t really choose to focus on what makes Belfort despicable; instead he focuses on the fun and hectic nature of that lifestyle. Belfort, like the viewer, is distracted from what’s really important in life. At this point in the film, Belfort is willing to toss the love of his life away for drugs, money, and a fling with a woman he just met, and the casualness with which he disregards Teresa only goes to show how fast he’s sinking into depravity. From that point in the film, Belfort looses any sort of moral compass; he’s more concerned about how much he can get and how fast. He has no regard for the people he’s working with; he becomes, at this instance, that titular “Wolf.” The film from there is a downward spiral towards a burnout, and watching this happen is like watching the aftermath of a horrific plane crash; it’s simply impossible to look away.
Verdict:
If there is a film that better demonstrates the allure and destructive powers of wealth, greed, and excess, I don’t know what it is. This film is a masterpiece, and with this review, I barely feel as if I’ve scratched the surface of what makes it great. “The Wolf of Wall Street” is Scorsese’s funniest film, but it’s also one of his most epic and brutally honest.
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