#3) The Wolf of Wall Street, by Martin Scorsese (2013)

I don’t think Martin Scorsese was ever satisfied that he had a working formula. He’s an artist in the truest sense, continually outdoing himself film after film, seeking the higher question: how can I do this better? After wowing us with 2011’s 3D epic Hugo, Scorsese went back to the drawing board, venturing down the road fellow NYU alumnus Oliver Stone twice rode with his Wall Street series. Wolf of Wall Street showed this world from a different angle, focusing on the interior of it’s Gordon Gekko counterpart, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), an ambitious con artist who starts a brokerage firm that grows into a success, illegally. 

Jordan starts out as ‘pond scum,’ working as a stockbroker for L.F. Rothschild on Wall Street, when the infamous Black Monday hits, the largest one day stock market drop in history, leaving him and countless others jobless. He gets employed at an unregulated penny-stock boiler room, using his savvy New York salesmanship in a suburban shopping center dump to catapult his way to success. Before long, he’s running his own brokerage, Stratton Oakmont, recruiting misfits like Sea Otter, Rugrat, Chester, and Toby to follow his phone script formula, misleading investors with manipulated stocks.

Despite virtually screwing everyone who invests in him, Jordan is a fun character, and we are invited along to indulge in his vices. Donnie (Jonah Hill) envies him the way any of us middle classmen would, boldly requesting to join him and quit his lousy furniture store job. They move into Wall Street, have massive house parties and drug-fueled orgies, Jordan marries the Duchess of Bay Ridge, Naomi (Margot Robbie - “I would let that girl give me AIDS”), and money is spent recklessly on yachts, aircraft, cars, a mansion, prostitutes, and of course, more drugs. All while FBI agent Patrick Denham (Kyle Chandler) follows the money trail, rooting out the inconsistencies, and targeting the illegal fraud.

The viewer gets to play along as a disciple of Belfort’s fraudulent schemes; we’re audience to his sales technique seminar, attentively learning every slick detail of how to hook, line and sink. We even get to see ourselves in a mirror at the end of the film as the camera faces us, highlighting our eager complexion. But we also get to hear ourselves as the person getting screwed on the other end of that telephone while Jordan gives us the finger and metaphorically mimes fucking us from behind.  

Scorsese has always been known for his frenetic energy, but it’s so high in this film that three hours inexplicably feels like 90 minutes, so much that it may have finally burnt him out and reset him. His next narrative almost literally declares this with its title, Silence, which outright subdues his entire form, a style that also carries into The Irishman. Wolf may be the last film Scorsese fires on all cylinders. Jimmy Castor’s “Hey Leroy, Your Mama’s Calling You” plays over a pendulant camera through Oakmont, capturing the fallout of Jordan’s motivational speech - “I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich!” Jordan is like a spiritual leader with a cult following, not unlike Scorsese himself, their energies complementing one another.

As much as we have fun with Jordan, there’s a deep satisfaction to agent Denham’s pursuit. We get a sense of his workingman wages, and for a moment we might even believe he could accept a bribe from Jordan. Perhaps one of the best acted scenes this decade occurs on a yacht, Denham questioning Jordan about financial irregularities. It’s such a tricky scene, Denham playing into his hand, Jordan young and stupid enough to momentarily fall for it. Jordan’s rattled, responding by hiding his money in Switzerland. But there are deeper cracks that threaten to crumble everything. Brad (Jon Bernthal) is the muscle of the operation, and he doesn’t get along with Donnie. When the two have their blowup in front of police, a briefcase full of illegal money is apprehended, putting Oakmont at an impasse as the FBI circumvent. It doesn’t help that Jordan gets arrested for driving under the influence of Lemmons, one of the best physically performed scenes since Eddie Redmayne portrayed ALS in Theory of Everything. Scorsese, the master expressionist, shows how things look to Jordan juxtaposed to how they really are; the long staircase he has to crawl down is really much shorter, the safe drive home was really a disaster. Scorsese was born a Catholic, but has always challenged the role of God through his films as thoroughly as Carl Sagan would in his books. There is something akin to a deus-ex-machina that tries to change Jordan’s course, but is it too late? I’m curious to know how anyone feels, whether Jordan ever really fundamentally changed or not.

I love how bold and brash this film is, how it sucks you in through glorification, only to spit you back out empty-handed. It’s one of the most challenging, morally ambiguous films in Scorsese’s catalogue. We can be both the victim and the profiteer, empathetic of ambition but hurt by its greed. There’s no compliment high enough for the performances; Leo screaming on a microphone, Rob Reiner answering the telephone in an English accent, high frame rate Jonah Hill falling into friends on Quaaludes, or Margot Robbie laying Jordan an ultimate blow – everyone brings their best to such a degree that you forget it’s a movie. Rodrigo Prieto, likely picked up for his cinematography on Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, seems to have cemented himself to team Scorsese the way Thelma Schoonmaker has as his editor for the last fifty years. All of his collaborators are reaching higher through a process that awakens enlightenment. They don’t come away with easy answers, which is too often the problem with lesser, one-dimensional movies. They leave us challenged, which is exactly what we need in this era of black or white, left or right, this or that.

From Paramount Pictures. Directed by Martin Scorsese. Screenplay by Terrence Winter. Based on the book by Jordan Belfort. Produced by Riza Aziz, Joey McFarland, and Emma Tillinger Koskoff. Cinematography by Rodrigo Prieto. Edited by Thelma Schoonmaker. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Kyle Chandler, Jon Bernthal, and Rob Reiner. Rated R.

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