The Wolf of Wall Street

One of the joys of watching a film by Martin Scorsese is the confidence, even swagger, with which he tells his stories. There is an exuberance to the narratives that can be just as intoxicating as the drugs used by his characters. To some extent his power as a filmmaker is similar to the power Jordan Belfort, the main character in The Wolf of Wall Street, has when he is trying to sell things, anything, to a group of people. In that respect Scorsese might be the perfect director for this film. It might also be a reason why so many take issue with the film. had an excellent pace and rhythm with one of the best uses of voice-over/direct address in modern cinema, and several set pieces were fantastic, none more so than when Belfort and Donnie Azoff are experiencing the delayed effects of a powerful drug, severely inhibiting their control over their bodies and their ability to talk. There is a magic touch to the film, such as when a Ferrari suddenly changes colour whilst in motion. (Belfort is not necessarily a trustworthy narrator.) There was also a lot of good acting, especially Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew McConaughey. (By the way, they released two trailers for the film: the first was excellent, the second much less so. What happened there? Why did they feel the need to make a new one?)

In some ways The Wolf of Wall Street, much like The Big Bang Theory, can be seen as Revenge of the Nerds writ large. The characters in WoWS, with the exception of Belfort, are not exactly the brightest kids in the room and they might very well have been picked last at gym sessions in school. But now it is payback time, and they aim to skin the fat cats and fuck as much, and as many, as humanly possible. They are not bankers, and they are not really on Wall Street either (that is just where Jordan Belfort works for a few days in the beginning). They are basically con men, so in a way the film is as related to The Sting (George Roy Hill 1973, which is a good film) as it is to Wall Street (Oliver Stone 1987, which is not). The victims at first are poorer middle class but that is presented as more of a moral problem, partly articulated by Belfort's then wife Teresa Petrillo. After that talk Belfort and his friends decide to go after those who are already rich and have lots of money to spend. Those who have criticised the film for not showing the victims of Belfort's frauds have to some extent showed themselves to be surprisingly concerned for the lives of the rich. Although, here the film is somewhat hazy because some of Stratton Oakmont's victims were not that rich.

The most persisted complaint against the film is that it is not critical, but glamourises these people and their behaviour. Yet the film opens with the people at Stratton Oakmont's office throwing a dwarf and then there is a freeze frame just as the head of the dwarf is about to hit the target. Is that not enough to make the point that this is a film about characters that are appalling in all ways? The film does not leave it at that though, there are several such scenes (a female employee's head is shaved in one scene, and she is clearly most uncomfortable with it) leading up to the end where there is a scene in which Belfort almost kills his daughter. Why would Scorsese have such scenes in the film if it was not to condemn these people and their behaviour? It seems to me to be clear that Scorsese wanted to show how it was possible for Belfort to get away with what he did; to show his shallow charm and persuasiveness while at the same time showing how he was a person who ruined everybody he came into contact with, including himself.

"Stratton Oakmont is America" Belfort says in one pep talk, and the film seems to be saying that yes, America is like Stratton Oakmont and that is a very bad thing. The film, much like Pain and Gain (Michael Bay 2013), is about the "American Dream" where the dream is presented as a shortcut to an abyss. But it is not just the stock brokers, the guys at Stratton Oakmont would not have succeed if ordinary people had not been so pathetically eager to beat the odds and get rich(er) fast. And it is not only an American thing of course, it is universal. In the last image of the film we see the awed faces of ordinary kiwis (the scene is set in Auckland, New Zealand) trying to learn from Belfort how to get rich quickly. We have met the enemy and he is us, as Pogo said.

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A number of other Swedish bloggers has also written about the film. Here are links. The first blog is in English, the others in Swedish: The Velvet Café, Fripps, Rörliga bilder och ord, Jojjenito, Fiffi, Har du inte sett den, Movies-Noir, Except Fear, Filmparadiset.

On directors and their reputation

I read an article in The Guardian yesterday about the new film from the Coen brothers, A Serious Man. Or rather, A Serious Man was the starting point for a wider argument about filmmakers who suddenly makes a film which comes as a surprise because it's so very different from what they've done earlier. The writer Joe Queenan argues that A Serious Man is such a film, and then continues with the mentioning of The Age of Innocence (1993) by Martin Scorsese, The Bridges of Madison County (1995) by Clint Eastwood, Green Card (1990) by Peter Weir and Hulk (2003) by Ang Lee, among other films. It's an interesting angle, rather a good one. Perhaps the gist of Queenan's argument is in this quote "It is as if the film-maker abruptly decided to take a holiday from his own personality and make a film in somebody else's style." Now, I haven't seen A Serious Man yet so I won't talk about it, but I've seen the other films Queenan talks about and in hardly any case do I agree with him, which I think is interesting.

I agree that Age of Innocence is different from, say, Goodfellas (1990), and I haven't seen it for a long time so I won't dwell on it. Queenan says that there's "nary a gangster in sight", but it's not the first time Scorsese has left the world of the gangster, in fact, he's made a lot less gangster movies than you might think. When he did Age of Innocence he had made a film about a struggling single mother, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), far from the streets of New York. He had also made the musical New York, New York (1977) and a Biblical epic, The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), and various other things. So in a way, Age of Innocence may or may not have been different, but regardless of which it shouldn't come as a surprise that Scorsese would try a new genre.

Hulk was made three years after Ang Lee made the material arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wo hu cang long), and after he made a western, Ride With the Devil (1991). So he isn't all about Sense and Sensibility (1995) and Ice Storm (1997), which, incidentally, begins with Paul Hood (Tobey Maguire) discussing the finer points of the comic book heroes Fantastic Four, closely related to Hulk. And Hulk, like so often in Ang Lee's films, is about family and father/son relationships.

Green Card on the other hand is a very typical Peter Weir-film and not in the least bit off. Most of Weir's films is about a man who finds himself in a completely alien environment where he doesn't fit in and so has to leave in the end. Which is exactly the story of Green Card, where the man this time is a French bohemian artist suddenly in a posh New York society. Visually Weir's films differ from one to another, depending on the milieu, which is fitting, because perhaps the most important theme in Weir's films are the effects the environment has on the individual, and how space has a personality of it's own.

As for The Bridges of Madison County, this is where I very strongly disagree with Queenan. Queenan talks about the fact that nobody dies, that it's "the only truly romantic picture he [Eastwood] has ever made" and that it has "absolutely nothing in common with Unforgiven, Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josey Wales, White Hunter Black Heart or even Bird" All of this could be argued concerning Eastwood, yes, but not any more, not in reference to The Bridges of Madison County in 1995. Let's take the case instead to 1973, when Eastwood made Breezy. It's a very sweet and touching film about a young hippie girl, Breezy (Kay Lenz), who is looking for some love and guidance, and perhaps a father figure. She finds it in the bitter, late middle-aged man played by William Holden. There isn't a horse or a death in sight, just two lost human beings looking for love and companion and finding it where they least expected it. And Eastwood has also made films such as Bronco Billy (1980), about show people travelling the country with a rodeo, and Honkytonk Man (1982), about a country singer dying of tuberculosis. And so on and so forth. (And isn't the basic set-up in The Bridges of Madison County actually rather similar to, say, Pale Rider (1985) and High Plains Drifter (1971). A stranger comes to town, played by Clint Eastwood, stays for a while and then leaves, never to be seen again. There are obvious differences of course, such as the fact that the preacher in Pale Rider and the stranger in High Plains Drifter are ghosts coming back for revenge, but I feel there's a western air to The Bridges of Madison County.)

In the article Queenan also mentions other films and directors, but I'll not go on any further. It's partly a question of interpretation, but I also feel that a part of the reason why he argues that these selected films are so different is because he doesn't really compared them to the directors' other films, but to the popular myth of these directors. Which is perfectly fine I guess.