Runtime: 2 hours, 59 minutes
Rating: R
Director: Martin Scorsese
Quick Impressions:
Now I realize some people may think I’m kidding and some may think I’m crazy, but watching The Wolf of Wall Street inspired me to come up with the perfect part for Leonardo DiCaprio. He’s always rumored to be attached to projects about famous historical figures, but most of them fall apart in development and disappear forever. At one time he was going to be Alexander the Great, at another, Theodore Roosevelt. But after watching the inspirational, morale boosting speech his Jordan Belfort gives to the employees at Stratton Oakmont, I now know the historical figure DiCaprio was born to play. Don’t laugh. I’m serious.
Adolf Hitler.
Maybe on the surface DiCaprio seems an unlikely choice for Hitler, but I’m telling you, I think he could pull it off brilliantly and maybe finally win that Oscar. Seriously the best Hitler I’ve ever seen was Alec Guinness in some movie I happened to catch in progress on TV when I was twelve, and that hardly seems like typecasting. Guinness didn’t even play the part with a German accent or anything, but his intensity was so riveting that I got sucked into the movie and watched it till the end. To play Hitler, you need to be able to pull of the charismatic speeches and affable, warm, charming personal interactions. You also have to pull off deranged anger and limitless rage. I’m telling you, all you producers and directors out there, if you’re ever looking for a guy to play Adolf Hitler in a biopic, Leonardo DiCaprio is your man.
Some people are saying DiCaprio’s work in The Wolf of Wall Street is his best ever, and I’ll allow that it’s pretty great. Personally I prefer his amazing performance in The Departed, possibly my favorite performance by a lead actor ever. I also thought he was phenomenal in his supporting role last year in Django Unchained. Of course, he didn’t even get nominated for those two amazing performances, but hopefully he’ll get in this time. I mean why wouldn’t he? There are only like twenty-five actors jockeying for Best Actor nominations this year, so what could possibly go wrong for DiCaprio’s Oscar hopes?
Since I love Leonardo DiCaprio, I do think he should get an Oscar nomination for his work here. But regardless of his chances, his performance is outstanding and basically makes the movie. My husband and I both really enjoyed The Wolf of Wall Street, and I’d recommend it to anyone who knows that it was originally rated NC-17 and over three hours long and hastily re-edited by Martin Scorsese in order to get a 2013 release date. The movie is about excess, so if you’re put off by debauchery, or you don’t think you would enjoy a movie that was originally rated NC-17, then maybe this isn’t for you. Don’t be too scared, though. There’s nothing that shocking, just repeated quick cuts of orgies, a little blood, a little gore, an ongoing survey of all the naughty things Jonah Hill can do with his penis, incessant drug use, violence to women and children, an awkward conversation about dwarfs, and non-stop vulgarity. You know, the usual hard R stuff. There’s nothing really shocking like two women in love having sex for ten minutes like you’d see in an NC-17 movie.
The Good:
I know some people think The Wolf of Wall Street is too long. My soon-to-be five-year-old is definitely in that camp. While my husband and I went to see The Wolf, my parents took her to see The Hobbit for a second time. She was stunned (and indignant) when after she watched the entire Desolation of Smaug our movie still hadn’t ended. Honestly I went in expecting the movie to drag. Most three hour movies do. (The Desolation of Smaug, for instance, is fun to watch but definitely slow in places.) I was surprised, however, to find The Wolf of Wall Street’s pacing reasonably brisk. I felt consistently entertained the whole time and was always eager to see what was coming next.
There’s a moment when Jordan’s father urges him to make a deal with the S.E.C. that tricked me into thinking that the film might end sooner than I had expected. Wow, I thought, kind of stunned. That did not seem like three hours. That flew by. When the movie surprised me by continuing, I was actually relieved since that ending hadn’t felt right. I was happy, even excited, to watch more. I never felt restless about the time or even worried about using the bathroom. The film was engrossing, and I was glued to the screen until Matthew McConaughey finished singing his song in the credits.
I am beginning to fall in love with Matthew McConaughey. He’s very good in his small role in the beginning, but I was so delighted when he started singing during the credits. In general, The Wolf of Wall Street has a phenomenal soundtrack. It’s too bad the Academy doesn’t give an award specifically for the soundtrack. The score of this film didn’t make an impression on me, but the use of perfect songs to help set each scene was absolutely phenomenal.
Leonardo DiCaprio carries the entire movie with the type of all important lead performance that requires both an actor and a movie star of sufficient stature. He makes Jordan Belfort incredibly charismatic and surprisingly sympathetic. (Even when you’re shocked or disgusted by Jordan’s behavior, it’s hard not to root for him, a bizarre impulse given what a pointedly immoral, utterly degenerate hedonist he is.) Going into the movie, I took for granted that Jordan Belfort would be depicted as a complete sociopath. I mean, aren’t sociopaths the people best equipped to succeed in business without really trying? Harming others for gain comes naturally when you have an empathy defect and high threshold for pain/pleasure.
But as played by DiCaprio, Belfort is far more complicated (which is a very good thing since sociopathy sometimes strikes me as a convenient construct for demonizing and oversimplifying complicated people, anyway). While he definitely puts his own pleasure ahead of the welfare of strangers, Belfort actually cares deeply for both his wife and his immensely flawed friend and business partner. Given the bizarre excesses of his character, I was genuinely surprised to realize that Belfort actually loves his wife. (I mean his second wife played by Margot Robbie. His first wife is a much nicer person, but she’s not really Jordan’s type. It’s easy to imagine her moving on after the divorce by settling down with some nice, loquacious architect type and having a couple of kids who hopefully really love listening to stories so long they would make Dido weep from boredom.)
Not only does Belfort love his wife and his friends, but he also loves his company. He may have all kinds of scams and angles designed to make him rich, but clearly for him Stratton Oakmont is more than just a half-baked scheme. He truly believes in his company and in the people who work for (and clearly idolize) him. As depicted in the movie, Jordan Belfort is not a sociopath at all. He has a moral core and definite values. They’re simply terribly askew when compared to the norm. He worships wealth and takes hedonism to a new level. In my mind, that’s what makes the character so interesting. He doesn’t want money to do x, y, z. He doesn’t want money as a means to an end. For Belfort, money is the end. Money is the greatest, highest good. Money is happiness. Money is the pinnacle of life. Jordan Belfort’s wants are few. All he wants, in fact, is to be rich. So when he spends extravagantly and behaves excessively, it’s not because he’s lost sight of his goals. Behaving that way is his goal.
Surely DiCaprio’s Belfort is destined to become an iconic character, remembered by film historians for ages. I’ve heard a few people complaining about this movie’s Christmas Day release, but I think in some ways it’s bizarrely fitting. As Ebenezer Scrooge learned, Christmas is a time for contemplation, self-examination. And Jordan Belfort provides so much food for thought. It’s like he holds up a mirror for the rest of us (a crazy funhouse mirror, maybe, but it has our image in it, nonetheless.) The best part about Jordan is that he’s so American. He’s capitalism run amok, the embodiment of the American dream. In some ways, he’s a little like the Energizer Bunny. He just keeps going and going and going and going. Questions of motivation hardly seem to matter. The idea of money is more important than the money. The idea of being rich is more important than what you do with the money.
The question worth asking is, If Jordan Belfort is so obscene, so objectionable, then why does our entire way of life make his lifestyle possible?
Yes, maybe Jordan breaks some laws here and there, but for the most part Belfort is working within the system, not against it. From birth, we’re primed by our society to make and spend money. That’s what makes us good Americans. We’re supposed to get out there and blow our entire December paycheck on Christmas because it’s good for the economy. We’re supposed to buy all the products advertised on TV because it’s good for the economy, and it will make us happy. Belfort basically spends his life careening over the edge of a pretty well known slippery slope. His path of offensive excess is merely the natural end of the road we’re all told to follow as Americans.
If we work hard, we’ll be successful. If we’re successful, we will make lots of money. If we make lots of money, we should spend it. Even the sexual excesses presented in the movie—apparently distasteful to some audiences—are only the values our society introduces to us from a very young age carried to their extreme. If you don’t think we give our young girls the message that their self-worth is tied up in their sexuality and their sexuality is their ticket to riches, then you’ve never tried to shop for clothes for a tall four-year-old who wears a size six or seven. Just a few days ago, my sister and I were discussing the fact that the majority of clothes made for elementary school aged girls are bedazzled with messages like SEXY or I’ve Got Daddy’s Credit Card. Little girls are so used to having commercialism rammed down their throats that they grow up expecting 1) other things to be rammed down their throats 2) monetary remuneration.
Now I enjoy buying Christmas presents and spending money on my daughter’s wardrobe as much as the next person. But I do think we shouldn’t be surprised that when we tell kids repeatedly to buy all the toys, many of them will grow up into adults who use their money to buy all the toys. Similarly, we often give little girls the message that they are the toys, toys which both can and must be bought. But then when we see people behaving like Jordan and his colleagues—spending money for sheer love of spending, treating women like disposable objects—we’re always so horrified.
Early in the film, Jordan tosses out a pretty key premise—everybody wants to be rich. (Then an exception gets made for those in minority religious groups who value spiritual rewards more.) But Jordan thinks that all regular, average people want to be rich. And let’s face it, he’s kind of right. Now, granted, we might not spend our money the way he does, but most of us would love to have the option.
Watching the movie, I basically had one persistent thought that led to three others:
1) Why would anybody who became so rich spend the money like that? 2) Why wouldn’t anybody who became so rich spend the money like that? 3) I wish that I were so rich that I could afford to spend money like that. 4) This is so sad.
Seriously, Jordan’s behavior—the way he jumps immediately to absolute excess—is so bizarre. But on the other hand, isn’t it also kind of bizarre the way most of us turn Christmas into an absolute orgy of buying stuff, often stuff that people really don’t need or even have room for?
As we left the theater, my husband pointed out that the film is so rich with ideas, it’s hard to know what to take away. The Wolf of Wall Street seems to be saying so much. I think one of its key goals is to make us wince at the ridiculous, extreme, hedonistic excess of Jordan and his friends. Why do they behave like that? Why? Why? Once we ask that question, we’re forced to think about why making money in such a way is possible, why society rewards the wealthy, why all of us are indoctrinated from childhood into the idea that making and spending money are the two best things a person can do in life.
But the movie wouldn’t work without the energetic, whole-hearted performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill who make these disgusting displays of senseless excess look fun, invigorating, vital to life. I think Terence Winter’s screenplay also deserves Oscar consideration. It makes us ask important questions like, Why are the honest people always poor? Why does the FBI pointedly go after the self-made man instead of the countless others who came from money and position?
DiCaprio’s lead performance really makes the whole film work, and Jonah Hill also pulls his weight as the equally off-the-wall, over-the-top Donnie Azoff. The supporting cast is also good, particularly Cristin Milioti, Margot Robbie, Matthew McConaughey, Rob Reiner, Joanna Lumley, and Jean Dujardin.
Best Action Sequence:
Certainly the most riveting action sequence comes near the end when DiCaprio’s Belfort proves that while he may know how to sell stock, he’s not so great when it comes to winning a woman back. Oddly I found Belfort extremely sympathetic in this scene, strange because for me his behavior was more downright repugnant here than in the entire rest of the movie. Throughout the film, Jordan behaves badly exercising little self control, but we always get the idea that he loves his wife and children. Despite his capacity for rage and his justifiable frustration and anger, I did not expect him to become so physically violent and criminally reckless.
Best Scene Visually:
One of the most visually arresting sequences I’ve seen in a long time comes when the special quaaludes finally kick in, and Belfort must take a most unusual route to his car. Several people in the theater with us found this scene hysterically funny. While there’s definitely an element of slapstick, my husband and I agreed that it was far too sad and serious to be laugh-out-loud hilarious. Still it’s hard not to be captivated by Jordan’s unusual trip home, followed by the even more unusual events once he gets home, followed by the reexamination of how he got home.
Funniest Scene:
One of my favorite scenes in the film is the voyage of the yacht on “choppy” waters. Even though what’s happening is horrible, there’s such a deranged, off-kilter humor in the presentation. The scene on the plane is similarly hilarious/disturbing.
Best Scene/Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Leonardo DiCaprio):
DiCaprio’s Oscar clip (and Hitler audition) has to be the big speech he gives to “rally the troops” at the time of his intended resignation. He’s wonderful here. The character really comes alive. We understand perfectly why Jordan has found so much success. We see why so many people believe in him. This scene stands out because it’s a conspicuous display of positive emotion. Ordinarily, the key scene in an Oscar baity film involves crying, screaming, or going insane. But Jordan Belfort is just speaking…from the heart, and doing it really well. I hope Leonardo DiCaprio gets in. As a long time fan, I’d love to see him win, but it’s hard for me to imagine that happening. There are so many people to beat. In an ideal world, I’d nominate Bruce Dern, Matthew McConaughey, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Leonardo DiCaprio, and either Tom Hanks or Christian Bale. But there are a lot of performances I still haven’t seen.
DiCaprio’s also quite good every time he’s fighting with his wife, and in his sweet little scene on the park bench with his wife’s aunt.
Most Oscar Worthy Moment (Jonah Hill):
Best Supporting Actor seems like such a crazy, up-in-the-air jumble this year. Who knows who’ll end up in the category in the end. Going in, I’d heard Jonah Hill does shocking and terrible things in this movie, and I suppose he does. (I expected to be more shocked, but maybe I’m getting jaded.) Hill’s character is more like an oversized kid who gets everything he ever wanted and gets used to it. So yeah, he does some jaw-dropping things, but after a (very short) while, we start to expect him to behave that way, so we’re not exactly shocked anymore when he does. He’s very good and totally committed to being shocking, but I’m not sure he needs an Oscar just for daring to be objectionable. For me, the two moments that stand out most are his baffling bad behavior when he hands off the suitcase of money and his reaction when he reads the note DiCaprio’s character has written to him the last time they sit face to face. And then there’s that moment at the party. My husband didn’t see Jonah Hill’s penis, but I could swear that I did, after he’s already on the floor and at kind of a weird angle. Well, anyway, I could swear I saw a penis. It looked so conspicuously large and penisy that I wondered if it was a prosthetic of some kind. I’ll have to look into that later.
The Negatives:
So many people are going to hate this movie. That seems inevitable. It’s a little frustrating, but I know that a number of people genuinely feel shocked or put off by continuous profanity and gratuitous sex. Going into the movie knowing it had been an NC-17, I found all of its crude content pretty tame. I mean, yeah, there are a lot of orgy/gratuitous sex scenes, but these are really more comedic (maybe tragic) than erotic. They’re thrown in there as an example of excess, to make the audience understand, or laugh, or sometimes feel a sad, pitying sentiment. They’re really not there to titillate. And the camera always moves very quickly. It’s cut like an R, not an NC-17. There’s a huge difference between seeing twenty-five fully naked women in six seconds and two or three for six minutes.
Personally, I would have liked more background information on Belfort. We meet his parents, but we don’t really get a good idea of what motivates him to become rich in the first place. His idea of having wealth seems taken from a Bugs Bunny cartoon. (You know the ones where Yosemite Sam is courting the widow Granny, and they toss the money into the fireplace?) Because we don’t know more of his background, we have to take him at his word and assume that he wants to be rich because he believes that’s what everybody wants. So maybe the film deliberately withholds information about young Jordan because it wants us to think of him as being just another American who fulfilled the American dream of striking it rich. But I don’t know.
Many of the characters are hard to figure out. Jonah Hill’s character is highly mysterious. I mean, we keep getting clues that he’s gay. Also he’s married to his cousin. He doesn’t seem to have any kind of moral compass, and yet he’s totally devoted to Jordan, so much so that he’s willing to give him his money (his greatest good). I’d like a little more background on him, too.
Jordan’s second wife Naomi (Margot Robbie) is the least developed character, and it’s pretty frustrating. Martin Scorsese movies are not really where you look for amazing female characters. The only really strong female that I remember from one of his films is Cate Blanchett in The Aviator, and that’s only because all she has to do is remind the audience of Katharine Hepburn, and, violà, the legacy of the Katharine Hepburn does all of the work. I found it impossible to like Naomi. To me she seems like a shallow, opportunistic gold digger, always eager to kick her husband when he’s down. Robbie gives a good performance, but the character is very thinly drawn. Cristin Milioti as his first wife is less important to the story but more of a realistic, three-dimensional person. Probably the only woman in the movie who comes across as sympathetic, intelligent, and important to Jordan is his aunt-in-law played by Joanna Lumley.
I also think the character of the F.B.I. agent, though well played by Kyle Chandler, is almost unforgivably underdeveloped.
It’s kind of shocking that in a three hour movie, we don’t get more character development. Then again, all of these people are focused on lives of shallow, superficial, materialistic excess, so maybe the movie deliberately emphasizes the shallow, superficial nature of everything it shows us. I’m the type, though, who prefers to know more about characters and what makes them tick. I’d rather they seem more like individual human beings and less like an object lesson.
Overall:
After a conversation with my soon-to-be five-year-old, I can safely say that if you’re disappointed when you find out that The Wolf of Wall Street does not feature a protagonist cursed with lycanthropy, then you’re too young to see this movie. Scorsese and DiCaprio’s latest collaboration is always entertaining, winningly engaging, and at moments even brilliant. At three hours, it is pretty long, but it’s fast-paced, and honestly since the movie is a celebration (and perhaps condemnation) of excess, I certainly wouldn’t know what to cut.
Leonardo DiCaprio does some of the finest work of his career and deserves an Oscar nomination. Jonah Hill is also fantastic and totally committed to his increasingly outrageous role. As long as you’re not put off by nudity, profanity, vulgarity, violence, and drug use, then why not give The Wolf of Wall Street a try? Seriously, it’s worth going just to hear a howling Matthew McConaughey perform a longer version of his awesome wolf song during the credits.