Wall Street’s fast lane
FILM REVIEW by Don Perlgut. With five Oscar nominations including best film, best director and best actor, director Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is one of the big summer releases.
It’s solidly entertaining, and the wry black comedy (not always successfully) satirises the culture of excess that has taken over the American financial services industry.
Scorsese has spent four decades making vigorous, ground-breaking films. Imagine his frenetic gangster film Goodfellas crossed with Oliver Stone’s Wall Street and you get the idea of The Wolf of Wall Street.
Leonardo DiCaprio shines in the lead role of Jordan Belfort, a real-life young crash-and-burn Wall Street trader who made a rapid rise to success, living a lifestyle of fast cars, women, drugs and alcohol.
This bacchanalian tale includes excessive doses of sex, pill-popping, nudity and swearing that runs for 179 minutes.
The title of this film has multiple meanings – in 1991 a Forbes magazine writer described Belfort as a “twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself and his merry band of brokers”.
In his scenes of lifestyle indulgence, DiCaprio gives a great performance, including a physical comedy we have rarely seen before.
Scorsese’s sense of humour continues in his other casting decisions. Australian actress Margot Robbie plays Belfort’s second wife with astonishing depth and as a fully convincing New Yorker.
Matthew McConaughey plays the multiple-martini-lunch broker who first introduces Belfort to the techniques of Wall Street fun and money-making. Jean Dujardin (of the Oscar-winning The Artist) gleefully plays the sleazy French Swiss banker who helps Belfort hide millions in a Swiss bank, assisted by Belfort’s wife’s British “Aunt Emma” (Joanna Lumley).
And in smaller roles, Jewish essayist Fran Leibowitz plays the judge who sentences Belfort, filmmaker Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel, director of Her) appears and the real Jordan Belfort shows up to play a host who introduces the DiCaprio version of himself.
The Wolf of Wall Street holds some uncomfortable questions for Jews. Although not specifically identified in the film, the real Jordan Belfort is Jewish. The DiCaprio character makes numerous references to “WASPs” and consciously chooses the company name, Stratton Oakmont.
Belfort’s father Max (played by iconic Jewish actor/director Rob Reiner) is even more explicitly Jewish. So are almost all of Belfort’s friends, many with obvious Jewish names.
DiCaprio’s voice over describes Jewish actor Jonah Hill’s character of Donnie Azoff as wearing “horn-rimmed glasses with clear lenses so as to look like a WASP”. Drug dealer friend Brad Bodnick wears a very prominent golden necklace “chai”.
One of the challenges faced by this film is its moral murkiness. Despite numerous proven charges of insider trading and money laundering, Belfort spent less than three years in jail and was sentenced to pay defrauded investors $110 million (of which little has been repaid).
The Wolf of Wall Street is currently screening.
PHOTO of Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in The Wolf of Wall Street.
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