"THE WOLF OF WALL STREET" PROWLS THE OSCARS

I remember when I first saw the trailer for The Wolf of Wall Street. I was working on something or other with multiple social media websites running in the background when Twitter gave a shiver and a jump. Within the space of ten minutes over half the people I follow (and trust me, I follow a fair few) had shared the trailer. If that isn’t an invitation to click on the link, I really don’t know what is. The moment I saw it, I knew. Oh goodness, big, bold and larger than life : The Wolf of Wall Street was going to take us all by storm and I could NOT wait…

Now, unless you have been living under a stone for the last few months, you will know full well by now that this is the real-life story of Jordan Belfort. Played by the once again brilliant Leonardo DiCaprio (and I REALLY want him to get the Oscar® for this one) we watch the unbelievable rags to riches story of Belfort and his cronies. Jordan is a young man with a gleam in his eye when arrives at Wall Street all those years ago. That gleam is ambition and greed. Now, we all know how Wall Street works. For those who are willing to be “flexible” and with a talent in sales there are many back ways up the career ladder – and Jordan uses and abuses every. Single. Step. Life is one big drug and booze fuelled party at first. Jordan himself has trouble adapting to it – but like most humans, he adapts quite quickly to the finer things in life and after that, honestly, there is really no turning back. Or so it seems. Because for every over-ambitious young man clawing in the cash by any means possible, no matter how outrageous those means are, there is an FBI agent watching very closely and patiently waiting for a slip-up…

There are several reasons this film is brilliant. Now, you may have read my entry on The Great Gatsby last week where I classed the film as an attempt to be larger than life on an emotional and visual scale that failed – at least on the emotional scale. This film is larger than life emotions done right. I mused for a minute over what made the difference as I watched the Wolf of Wall Street. Because God knows the setting is modernised but not that different : Jordan lives in a huge fairy tale mansion with his trophy wife, kids, cars, yachts, helicopters and God alone knows what besides. The parties are unbelievable but not “classy” like Gatsbys – more sleazy. But still, larger than life. And for me, it felt right. But why did Lhurman’s film feel beautiful but fake while Scorsese’s felt completely real? It hit me as I watched a little further. And it’s a lot simpler than you might think. Belfort’s life is one we actually live. No, we do. It is very much a story of our times. First up, we have lived Jordan’s life on a much smaller scale- and possibly not quite in the sequence he does things. But most of us have been to a few truly wild parties where we got rip-roaring drunk back in our day. Some of us even experimented with narcotics. Who doesn’t know that “graduating to the big league” feel of your first pay check? You remember your first apartment? Yeah? Did it not feel like Jordan’s mansion when you first moved out of your parents’ place? Your first beat-up car, remember that? Not the hand-me- down from your Dad but the one you BOUGHT with your own money?  Was that not the coolest ride ever, for all the GIP it gave you breaking down every other day? Yeah… We all know that feeling. Well that and the fact that, come on. I’m not saying we would all go around boozing, doing drugs and defrauding people but who doesn’t want to be rich? I know, I know, there are a lot of hippies out there, like myself, who would fiercely argue that money isn’t everything and it really, really isn’t but… You would enjoy that life. You would love your life to be one long party. Hopefully one you didn’t have to fuel by lying and cheating but the pure “party” aspect of it? You’d love it. You know you would.

Maybe if we watched Gatsby or indeed Lhurman’s other films, Moulin Rouge for example, in a different era it would feel different. Imagining cinema was as it is today back in Gatsby’s day, the audience may well have reacted to the film the way we are reacting to Wolf of Wall Street right now. That would be such an interesting experiment actually. I must remember this for when I have a time machine.

This is also why, I reckon, critics are in such a panic about Wolf of Wall Street glorifying a certain lifestyle. It does not matter that Belfort and his cronies are painted with almost no redeeming features. It’s the “realness” of it all that creates the strongest temptation. DiCaprio and Scorsese may well complain about this particular bit of the backlash but it was, I suspect, a risk they knowingly took. It was the fact that they were tapping into this already existing dream that makes the film sell so well. Critics can lambast the film all they like. As The Wolf of Wall Street says, there is no such thing as bad publicity.

I mean, apart from anything else, including the quite serious messages it encloses, The Wolf of Wall Street is basically a heist movie mixed with a drunken-boozey- hangover comedy. I refer you, for one example, to the EPIC scene portraying Jordan and the “delayed action” drugs – you know that particular event that marks the beginning of his downfall. I do not laugh out loud much at this kind of comedy but this… Oh my God I was in STITCHES. The entire film is worth watching for DiCaprio’s performance alone.

Well, so what can we say? The film does tell a very “materialistic” story but hey… Guess what, that is the world we live in. If we’re all going to start griping about art’s duty to change the world, let’s please remember that art is also a reflection of the society we live in, albeit the larger than life subconscious. The Wolf of Wall Street is precisely that. I mean, in the same vein, I remember a rather bitter tweet stating (I paraphrase because I can’t for the life of me retrieve the Tweet) “I never go to a Scorsese film if I want to see strong female characters”. Err No. Honestly, neither do I. But then again, that’s the way Scorsese’s films have always been. He has always been a “lads” type of filmmaker and has always done what it said on the tin. His female characters are always sketchy stereotypes with no real “meaty” part in the story and the whole affair is generally full to bursting with testosterone. The Wolf of Wall Street makes no exception. Jordan’s wife is the typical trophy wife in all ways, as for his employees, there’s the sassy secretary character –who is refreshing but has about two handfuls of lines – and one single female stockbroker. One. I mean I know this was the ‘80s but come on people, surely in real life there were more than one per floor? At least God I hope there were… I mean, honestly, this almost is the topic of a whole new blog post but you know what? Long story short, again, art is a reflection of the society it is created in. So is this film. We need to change the society we live in before we start griping about what we see in the mirror art holds up to us. I mean, if you look into the mirror and see the warts… It’s not REALLY the mirror’s fault… You can see that – right?