Dive into the ridiculous life of Jordan Belfort with Chris, Joel and Neil in today's edition of the Summer of Netflix!
Chris' Thoughts: Leo is probably the most talented guy with the worst luck. This role was easily his best chance at getting a Best Actor Oscar, he just had the unfortunate luck to be nominated the same year Dallas Buyers Club came out. All that aside, I enjoyed the pants off this movie, it’s an unbelievable movie based on a unbelievable, ridiculous real life story. The first time I saw this, I kept repeating to myself, “how is this guy still alive?” My only problem with the movie is that it seems to glorify the appalling things Belfort instead of admonishing them. But then again, it’s not like Belfort had to go to jail or anything, his punishment was to pay back all the money to his clients so visually, it’s hard to depict any sort of punishment on screen. This is one of those movies that I loved watching but really wishes it was fiction.
Joel's Thoughts: At the end of the day, this is why Wolf of Wall Street was so good. The movie made Jordan Belfort’s life look awesome. I mean watching the movie you know that you’re watching a person do terrible things to others to make lots of money, and then do terrible things with the money once he’s gotten it, but still it’s hard not to watch that movie and a small part of you think “Man, I wish that could be me.” Not that I’m saying you wish that you could have a life filled with drugs, prostitutes, and general debauchery, but wouldn’t it be great to have whatever your version of that life is? Maybe you want a copy of every video game ever made. Maybe you want to live a life of high adventure, deep sea diving and taking commercial flights to space, whatever your version of that level of financial freedom would be. That would be awesome! In that way, the movie really critiques you the audience, you know that there are lives that are being ruined because of this guy but that’s not what's on the screen right now, so you really don’t care that much about it. Belfort even turns to talk directly to you at one point to explain exactly how his scheme works, but stops because we really don’t care that much about that part of the story. He even says that. The Wolf of Wall Street shows how easy it is for you to get caught up in this idea of the great American Dream, with almost a non-stop montage of what it’s like to live the high life. And wouldn’t you really want to live in that house? To own that boat? Go to that pool party? Work in a place with people that driven all for success? This movie makes success look good and It’s so easy to look at that life and think “I want that.” with little to no regard for the consequences of the acts that took to get there. The movie doesn’t criticize you for feeling that way, but it does comment on it. The movie ends with shot of a crowd where every face shows the exact emotions of what you’re feeling. Not “How could this person do what he’s done to others” (even though you know what that is in the back of your head) but “I would love to have that kind of life.”
Neil's Thoughts: I was initially hesitant about Martin Scorsese's 2013 Wolf of Wall Street, expecting another Behind the Music-eque tale of drug, ambition and narcissism fueled rise and fall as old and cliched as the Roman Empire itself. Thankfully, Scorsese's work is more self aware than my dismal expectations allowed for, instead simply aiming to enjoy the ride of absurd exploits.
Abandoning the conventional plodding of a moral tragedy tale has allowed a peculiar ambivalence to become visible in the viewing public, one that mirrors the ambivalence we feel about the financial world itself. The fact that one could view this film and come away enthused about this lifestyle reminds is reminiscent of public reactions to hip-hop. They are both an attempt to honestly portray the absurd sadness and alienation of lives oriented to the present and the self, principally because of a future and a community without hope, then taken by those communities as a glorification and a goal to be achieved. We consistently hear reports of financial workers claiming that they were inspired by Wall Street's Gordon Gecko, and this author is concerned that audiences can continue to willfully ignore the broader view of these works.
It is enlightening to note that this film was made when it was, in the wake of the economic events of 2008 onward. Over the course of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort consistently abandons his attempts to explain his schemes to the audience, simply assuring them that, via financial trickery, the unscrupulous can defraud everyone and anyone. It reflects the vague but confused suspicion we feel now towards the financial world, that it is a tool for separating us from our money via a system that is too complex for anyone but those doing the separating to understand. Perhaps if more credit was given to the intelligence of the audience in the film, and the journalism of our modern world, it would serve to demonstrate that a persistence to boring critical thinking can serve to fish out the flash and push that these people use to deceive their marks, their coworkers, their regulators, their families, but ultimately themselves.
Scorsese's Wolf ultimately has no message, no broad point, instead satisfying itself with comic depiction. This surface appeal has won it a wide audience, and we can see now such an audience (myself included) brings meaning to the production themselves, seeing there their own thoughts and feelings about the subjects displayed. The ambivalence of the film is the ambivalence we all feel about our present time reflected back at us, and this is perhaps the only message one can genuinely sustain to a culture that is less and less able to agree on any values a message could speak to.
As is tradition, I give this film an arbitrary number out of another arbitrary number.
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