Watched: The Wolf of Wall Street
I think this deserves a preface. In the last week, I’ve been renting movies off Amazon (avoiding paying for them by using Hitbliss, which gives you rental credit in exchange for watching strange government ads), which means I’m beholden to their in-site video player, and holy shit I’ve been having trouble since Windows 8.1 updated itself. So know in advance that I spent the first hour of this movie frustratedly refreshing the page, full of tension, waiting for the next browser crash. The last two hours, I found a workaround, but up to that point I wasn’t exactly having the optimal experience.
All that said: I do not know how to feel about this film. It lacks the clear social commentary that other Scorsese films have. It’s a portrait of a truly awful person who is still thriving today, and that introduces a moral component that’s hard to get to grips with. By the end of the movie, it’s hard to believe that anyone would consider Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort a good person, but he also has moments of brilliant charisma that lure you in, only to spit you back out again when you witness his private life.
Maybe that’s because this film is about a salesman first and foremost, a drug addict second, and a criminal third. When talking about the technicalities of Belfort’s financial crime, DiCaprio winks at the camera and suggests that the viewer doesn’t really care about the technicalities, and he’s right - when so much debauchery is going on, and with so many rich (if chiefly male) characters, the sheer criminality of everything falls by the wayside. There are plenty of reasons to dislike the man without considering the lives he ruined.
It’s certainly not Martin Scorsese’s best film. For me, that remains Goodfellas, which feels like a thematically simpler cousin of this film, and benefits all the more for it. The style of these films is balls out, screaming into the night, unloading a tanker full of testosterone - and that’s fine, as long as we aren’t ascribing too much complexity to it all. DiCaprio’s Belfort can be wonderfully stupid - the much-referenced scene where he attempts to reach his car on industrial-strength quaaludes has to be seen to be believed - but he also has a complex internal monologue that he doesn’t necessarily deserve. It would have been nice to see a little more of Kyle Chandler’s FBI agent - the emotional payoff at the end (where the chief operators of Belfort’s firm are arrested) is sweet, but to spend a little more time on the good side of the fence, if only to provide a better contrast for the bad side, would have helped things.
There is something to be said for the way this film treats women, too. It’s not quite as bad as I’ve seen some reviews claim, but neither is it balanced, and I think so much of that comes from the fact that the camera so often focuses on Belfort. Margot Robbie’s Naomi as Belfort’s long-suffering wife (based loosely on her real-life counterpart, Nadine) is thinly-sketched, but you nevertheless find yourself rooting for her, and not always because she usually stands in opposition to the protagonist - there are moments of genuine humanity in her character, and she is elevated beyond a lot of other Scorsese women. She does get angry, and she is casually degraded by the male characters, but if anything her character is where a lot of the editorial comment comes in. Ultimately, she becomes the lone voice of disgust, rather than just another victim, and the film benefits for it.
What you’re left with is a film that is a ridiculous romp, throwing into stark relief the hollow excesses of Wall Street but never quite convincing you that it’s a bad thing. Which might be the genius in the film - wealth is intoxicating, as are, uh, intoxicants, and the fact that there’s no condescending message at the end of the film about how Belfort became completely sober (there’s every suggestion of a relapse) or became a total ascetic (he really, really isn’t) possibly speaks to the film’s intelligence. Either way, there is an interpretive jump with this film that allows for a diversity of opinion - or, if you’re like me, a sense of uncertainty when it comes to a final judgment. But that’s good. It’s refreshing to not be spoon-fed for once.