The lower depths
There's David O. Russell's approximation of a Martin Scorsese film, and then there's the original. The Wolf of Wall Street is everything American Hustle is-- sexy, funny, fluid, profane-- and more: disgusting, despairing, demented, in both a good and bad way.
Why watch a hundred and sixty plus minutes of Leonardo DiCaprio sniffing and screwing and screaming when Ray Liotta had done all that back in '90 and Robert De Niro had done it best (in my book, anyway) in '95? Because, well, no one does it quite the way Scorsese does, and I suppose if anyone has to repeat himself-- switching milieu from '70s Brooklyn to '70s Vegas to '90s Wall Street-- Scorsese's earned the privilege, charting the grotesque rise (through violence, through business, through deceit) and ignominious fall (through violence, through hubris, through sheer accident) of a white male in American society yet again. It's a story so vast and broad (if not exactly profound) it could stand being repeated thrice, the volume cranked up louder with each retelling-- or at least that was what Scorsese must have thought when he did this film.
Christina McDowell makes a compelling case in her letter to LA Weekly that the story shouldn't be told at all; that if anything Scorsese has done us a disservice telling Belfort's story with such cinematic brio. It's a heartfelt, harrowing letter, and should give the viewer pause; Scorsese does much in the picture but one thing he doesn't do is tell the victim's side of the story.
Hard to see Scorsese doing that, though. He rarely editorializes-- simply tells the tale, whether it's Jordan Belfort's or Henry Hill's or Jake LaMotta's; shows us the glamor and dirt, then shows us the fall. The most he'll give us by way of message is that the man-- any man-- gets his, eventually. Scorsese practically insists on this point-- even Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ is punished for wanting an ordinary life. We see Belfort snort up mountains of coke; we also see him struggle to his Ferrari, barely able to crawl because he's overdosed on 'luudes. We see him fucking everything in sight; we also see him atop his wife in one particularly excruciating scene, where she clearly doesn't want him there (I personally don't think Margot Robbie got near enough the credit she deserved).
And is all that high life-- the booze, drugs, naked girls-- necessary? Scorsese doesn't quite sell the decadence: you see what's happening, you get loud rock on the soundtrack, but he doesn't linger; the excess comes at you in a rush much the way it must've come at Belfort, or at least the way Scorsese imagines it must have come at Belfort. Scorsese's acting as anthropologist here, the cool observer with maybe a bit of inside information on the effects of mind-altering substances and other less pretty symptoms). He shows us the arc of Belfort's addiction (not to drugs-- when he's compelled to quit he does so without much struggle-- but to money and the power that money brings) in a way that's fascinating, almost addictive. We crave the high of Scorsese's style, the way Belfort-- and Hill, and Rothstein, and LaMotta-- crave the high of their respective vices.
If Scorsese is guilty of excusing or prettifying any of the facts, it's in suggesting that Belfort victimized mostly the rich (a lot of small business entrepreneurs got hurt); Belfort himself claims to have turned a new leaf (debatable) and has announced plans to hand over the profits from book and film to victims.*
*Possibly a moot point, as the film is doing disappointing business (actually, it made $400 million from a $100 million budget-- hindsight!). Which leads one to ask: is the film encouraging what? Glorifying what? Seems to me the general audience understood well enough what critics didn't: that Scorsese's picture is less entertainment than ordeal, one we don't sit through so much as suffer, the way Catholics suffer through Lent.
Will Belfort's proposed generosity become reality? Frankly I think Belfort hasn't stopped hustling. But the biggest disservice Scorsese may have done is to call attention to flashier predators, instead of the real criminals living quieter, more respectable lives.
But a film that probes into big-time financial corruption probably needs a different director with a different (more sober?) approach; even then you wonder if he (the theoretical filmmaker and his proposed work) could attract enough financing-- or audience-- to make a difference.
Meanwhile we've got this, Scorsese's latest, and what he does manage to do-- while hardly his best work-- is pretty damned good, I'd say.
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