SEX, DRUGS AND...MORE SEX AND MORE DRUGS (but that is not all)
By Jerry Saravia
"The Wolf of Wall Street" may very well be the most divisive film of director Martin Scorsese's career. I thought audiences were going to tune out from this film because it deals with a former Wall Street broker who scammed millions from the 98% and the richest 1%. It opened on Christmas Day, a day associated with the celebration of the human spirit and the birth of Jesus, not the celebration of a Satanic Caligula dressed up in modern clothes having sex with every hooker and consuming endless lines of cocaine. But what I thought was going to be a box-office bust wound up doing pretty well the past couple of weeks, scoring more than 68 million in box-office revenues, just behind the newest "Hobbit" flick. However, any time a film biography arrives, especially one this incendiary and passionate, the naysayers come out in full force. A few critics loved the film (I count myself as a supporter) but some critics, like David Edelstein and Michael Philips, have taken issue with the depiction of Jordan Belfort's excessive lifestyle. One of the first scenes in the film is Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) receiving oral sex in his Ferrari. Not too long after, he snorts coke from a woman's anus! Much later, Belfort's cronies have an office sex party where each male waits in line to have sex with a hooker. Sometimes it is a female worker at Belfort's Stratton Oakmont offices who delivers oral pleasure to every worker, and even marries one of them! Jordan has sex with his trophy wife (Margot Robbie) more than three times, and a scene where he forces himself on her has been criticized as a rape scene. I will not forget to mention there are a few shots of erect penises and vaginas as well, unusual for a R-rated film (Scorsese did trim some sex scenes to avoid getting a NC-17 rating).
Then there are the drugs, copious amounts. Cocaine is snorted with dollar bills and snorted on women's orifices. Matthew McConaughey, playing Belfort's first boss, snorts it at a business lunch as common ritual practice. Quaaludes figures prominently in the latter half of the film, quite hilariously during an extended sequence where Belfort tries to get inside his car by dragging himself literally in the street! Jonah Hill, playing Belfort's crummiest employee and confidante, also does his share of quaaludes including some from an expired date where it takes longer for the effects to be felt.
This depiction of Jordan Belfort's exorbitant lifestyle has been deemed as accurate by former friends of his and others who have crossed his path. But no one has discussed the copious amounts of shots of money. Money is flung into wastebaskets, flung at FBI agents, strapped around a female with tape and, a cliched shot to be sure, thrown into a bed where lovemaking occurs. The idea is that Belfort made so much money, he did not know what to do with it. That should make people angry - after all, he took from his investors who dabbled into penny stocks and larger stocks without ever giving anything back. Belfort gets away with it because he has a lethally persuasive charm and it helps that Leonardo DiCaprio plays the role with more vigor and passion than almost any other role he has ever played. DiCaprio persuades us to take this trip with him, but he is not always likable. Belfort punches his trophy wife in the stomach, takes his kid away and almost gets killed in the process. Belfort has been investigated by the FBI and decides to do rat out his friends, thus receiving a light jail sentence. Of course his own confidante (Jonah Hill), who gets wind that the party is over, decides to rat out Belfort.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" has also been criticized as ignoring the victims of Belfort's scams and schemes. But this is based on Belfort's two bestselling-books, and he never expresses sympathy for them in the books either (until recently, in the last few years, where he expressed disgust over his lifestyle, thus all profits from the books and the film have been given to the victims as part of his legal restitution). Ignoring the victims from Belfort's point-of-view fuels the flames of resentment towards Wall Street and all the Bernie Madoff's of the world.
The notion behind Scorsese's "Wolf" is to characterize this guy as scum, a rotten, money-grubbing individual who, in one scene where he flips the bird to a cold caller whom he later calls a loser, loves money and nothing else. By observing his flamboyant lifestyle and his endless motivational speeches to his crew (Belfort is now a
legal motivational speaker), we see a swindler, a con artist who is unapologetic from first frame to last. Viewers who walk out (a twitter account has been established for this purpose) on "Wolf" because it is too excessive or maybe too boring (though I can't see how) are missing the film's acerbic humor (the Golden Globes have nominated the film for Best Comedy). You can call "Wolf of Wall Street" whatever you want but it is definitely not porn nor is it a comfortable movie experience, but there are more than a few funny lines. "Wolf of Wall Street" is an indictment of a man who stole from the rich and the middle-class to give to himself. An observation of
what Jordan Belfort is rather than
who he is has pretty much defined Scorsese's cinematic career - he divulges insights based on behavioral study. All this talk of too much sex, too much profane language and too much drug-ingesting neglects the bigger issues.
