{"id":4294,"date":"2014-01-31T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-01-31T05:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smugfilm.com\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2015-04-24T09:00:40","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T13:00:40","slug":"the-wolf-of-wall-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/the-wolf-of-wall-street\/","title":{"rendered":"The Wolf of Wall Street: Fuck This Movie, Fuck Jordan Belfort, Fuck The Audience, And, I Guess, Fuck Me Too"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"THE
\n

\nThe Wolf of Wall Street<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by Martin Scorsese
\nScreenplay by Terence Winter
\n180 min.<\/p>\n

Spoilers ahead.<\/i><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t meant to be this way. No siree.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d gone to the theater that snowy midday to see Inside Llewyn Davis<\/a> again. I just wanted to once more curl up in some good ol\u2019 depressing Coen brothers greatness, goddammit. But it was sold out! And the only movie that wasn\u2019t<\/em> was ol’ Martin Scorsese’s newest\u2013 The Wolf of Wall Street. I\u2019d had mixed feelings about seeing it to begin with, but my boredom outweighed my uncertainty and I figured \u2018ah, what the hell.’<\/p>\n

Ah, I left the theater fuming with anger. I don\u2019t just mean annoyed\u2014I mean actually fuming mad and ranting about it in public. My anger seemed to stem from my inability to understand if this movie was brilliantly orchestrated as a relentless and morally superior lecture, or if was just a passive and amoral romp, letting the viewer decide what\u2019s right and wrong. What I did<\/i> know was that I resented the hell out of it\u2014and I needed yell so from the top deck of my million dollar yacht in front of a thousand of my closest friends.
\n
\nFor the record, I do not think movies that are about bad people are inherent glorifications\u2013however, I find it hard to justify this film as anything but. It\u2019s essentially one hundred and eighty ceaseless minutes about how successful and great Jordan Belfort is. In fact, if you think about it, there’s hardly a single scene where Belfort fails. Three-fourths of this movie is about how Belfort is a successful, loyal and compassionate winner. Then there\u2019s a brief interlude for his downfall\u2014but before it ends, he\u2019s right back up again. Sure, there\u2019s never a point where he\u2019s winning awards from the Church of Morals or what have you, but the picture we get is a man who comes from nothing and turns into something\u2014he\u2019s a hard worker, shrewd, has good business sense, and knows how to play the game. And he makes billions, gets the hot chick, and really never gets punished. Some of the most touching scenes are where Belfort (deftly played by Leonardo DiCaprio) gives impassioned speeches to his employees\u2013who look up at him with tears in their eyes, blow in their noses, and hookers at their feet. Honestly, since he’s shown in such an ‘inspirational’ light all the goddamn time, one could easily lose the movie for a lesson in the downsides of drug addiction.<\/p>\n

Then, there\u2019s the comedic elements\u2014this movie is paced, shot, and delivered like a straight-up slapstick comedy. The most obvious example of this is the Quaaludes scene\u2014Belfort and his right hand man Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) are squirming around on the floor drooling, slow-motion fighting, breaking tables, and spitting up food. It\u2019s shot like a lost scene from some sort of lame blue comedy like Scary Movie Whatever<\/a>\u00a0or an American Pie<\/a> rip off. There are also multiple scenes where Belfort humiliates and punishes his ex-wives after they make the bold mistake of trying to grasp for a little bit of power in the relationship. All of these scenes play off like rowdy 60\u2019s erotica\u2014think \u2018whoops, oh my!\u2019 and The Benny Hill theme as the women are publicly violated.<\/p>\n

Now at this point you’re thinking “duh, Jenna, the movie is about a criminal.” But here’s the thing\u2013 even worse than Belfort’s offensive lifestyle is how each time he and his cronies did something obnoxious, stupid, or corrupt, the entire audience giggled and smiled. As someone who didn’t crack a single damn smile throughout, I resented that most of all. In fact, I\u2019m convinced that anybody who thought this movie was \u2018a blast,’ or laughed at any point throughout, is probably scum. Okay, a bit harsh\u2013 but I just can\u2019t understand how they could kept falling for all that cheap humor when the overall theme was so horrific. There was only one brief scene which the audience gasped at disapprovingly\u2014a one second moment, towards the end of the film, where Belfort punches his wife. Apparently that was \u2018taking it too far.\u2019 There wasn\u2019t a gasp for the rape scene that takes place a minute before that, or all the drugs, sex, violence, and violations that take place for the previous two and a half hours. But hitting a woman? \u2018Wow, who does this guy think he is?’<\/p>\n

Then, you have the last scene. The last scene, in which the real Jordan Belfort has a cameo introducing the DiCaprio Belfort, who closes out the movie by giving a motivational speech to a rapt audience about how to be a winner. As the movie fades out, it lingers on a shot of the enraptured crowd sitting in rows of seats looking up, which draws a direct parallel to the theater audience. That\u2019s right\u2014the film effectively gives Belfort a three-hour blowjob, then holds up a mirror to the audience and says \u2018hey, fuck you.’ It places the blame entirely on the viewer for having bought a ticket to watch the movie. Maybe this is a lesson all of the other people who cackled their way through the film needed, but I sure as hell didn’t. If you wanted to talk to me about how Capitalist society is to blame for the evils in the world, fine, but I could\u2019ve saved thirteen bucks and three hours of my life and just read a newspaper instead.<\/p>\n

All of these factors together equal an angry Jenna. That said, I\u2019m more than happy to admit I feel The Wolf of Wall Street is a well-made and effective movie\u2014mostly because I will immediately give credit to any movie that produces a strong emotional response in me, even if the emotion is pure spiteful resentment. But I do still have ambiguous feelings about this movie\u2019s motives and morals. In order to show just how horrific these Belfort types are, Scorsese built a movie that lives and conforms completely to that world. The problem is, when you make an enjoyably, well-acted film about the successes of the corrupt, the satire of the statement can easily be lost\u2014at worst, you become just as morally ambiguous as the guy you\u2019re trying to make a statement about. While I personally looked upon Belfort\u2019s cult-like business sermons, womanizing, excess, lack of empathy, and slavish drug use as creepy and disgusting, I left the theater convinced the audience around me didn\u2019t see that at all. The last scene, for me, shows where Scorsese is coming from, but I worry it was far too subtle for the guys in row H who were still laughing about DiCaprio grabbing that passed out woman’s boob in that one scene.<\/p>\n

But now this puts me in a strange, circular blame game: the movie tells me that guys like Jordan Belfort are celebrated by our permissive, Capitalist society\u2014but I\u2019m a part of that problem too, that audience of permissiveness, because I bought a ticket which contributed to a celebration of this person I hate. Plus, I left the movie with a sense of moral superiority and disgust for not just Belfort, but this \u2018rest of society\u2019 who I believe glorifies him. Does this feeling of superiority prove that we are all as self-righteous as he is? Did Scorsese trick me into conforming to the egomania of the movie? Or<\/em>, have I always <\/i>been a conformist, due to the fact that I live in the society that celebrates and breeds Belforts?<\/p>\n

Great, now I\u2019m thrown into an existential, socioeconomic crisis, in addition to being angry about having watched this movie.<\/p>\n

Good game, Scorsese. It seems you win this round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"THE
\n

\nThe Wolf of Wall Street<\/a> (2013)
\n<\/b>Directed by Martin Scorsese
\nScreenplay by Terence Winter
\n180 min.<\/p>\n

Spoilers ahead.<\/i><\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t meant to be this way. No siree.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d gone to the theater that snowy midday to see Inside Llewyn Davis<\/a> again. I just wanted to once more curl up in some good ol\u2019 depressing Coen brothers greatness, goddammit. But it was sold out. The only movie that wasn\u2019t was this one. I\u2019d had mixed feelings about seeing it, but my boredom outweighed my uncertainty and I figured, \u2018ah, what the hell\u2019.<\/p>\n

I left the theater fuming with anger. I don\u2019t just mean annoyed\u2014I mean actually fuming mad and ranting in my head about it. My anger seemed to stem from my inability to understand if this movie was a brilliantly orchestrated, relentless and morally superior one\u2014out to teach a lesson\u2014or if was just passive and amoral, letting the viewer decide what\u2019s right and wrong. What I did<\/i> know was that I resented the hell out of it\u2014and I needed yell so from the top deck of my million dollar yacht in front of a thousand of my closest friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,2563],"tags":[594,5099,3339,564,104],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-allposts","category-jennas-reviews","tag-jenna-ipcar","tag-jennas-reviews","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-martin-scorsese","tag-smug-film-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4313,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions\/4313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smugfilm.com\/oldsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}