Quaalude Overdoses and Midget-Throwing: A Martin Scorsese Picture

Rating: 10/10 (29 December 2013)

Very likely being an avid follower of Martin Scorsese's works and even more likely to be particularly fanatical about his most accessible and recent films, you were right in expecting a total reflection of the GoodFellas/Casino formula and style---machine gun cutting, swooping camera, characters bursting through the fourth wall like wrecking balls, monster production scope and a soundtrack like a jukebox on speed, all to get us high on our complicity in the excessive debauchery of the characters and their fast-paced lifestyle---and it is indeed awesome. But it is also amazingly effective as a slapstick comedy, loaded with outrageous and absurd laugh-out-loud set pieces.
I say amazing because Scorsese has never done scenes like that and DiCaprio has never even done a comedy before. Scorsese has, but the hilarity here is not in the same vein as The King of Comedy. Or After Hours. It's much broader, goofier and unexpected, as demonstrated in several epic comic tours de force throughout. And it's that very sense of absurdity that makes its commentary on American capitalistic gluttony whole. You know exactly what movie you'll be seeing, but you'll be cheating yourself out of one hell of a ride if you don't see it. It clocks in at three hours but you still won't really want it to end. The movie is as outsized, excessive and compulsive as its title character is.
Money here is not just the root of all evil. It's the total disintegration of any and all traces of decency, at the throbbing heart of which is DiCaprio's character, Jordan Belfort, a real-life stock trader so outrageously shameless and blind to his routine corruption that he virtually appears to be sympathetic, even chivalrous. Belfort couldn't care less whether his clients made money, so long as his share was complete. And like the oligarchs running the country now, his forte was defrauding the the struggling working man who he jockeyed into investing in third-rate penny stocks. Even his sweet first wife is feeling enough to wonder why he marks people who can't afford to be conned. Her civility gets in his way and she's promptly usurped by a blonde lingerie model.
Scorsese's always able to take hard-to-like characters and look at them without judgment, then somehow never have a single dull moment no matter how long he has us watch them. In this case, unabashed farce is the key to it working as a commentary on the absurd overload of greed in this country and how disconnected the super-rich are from their actions and how they affect other people. It also has the most enjoyable and random cast I've seen in a long time, and almost certainly Jonah Hill's finest hour (or three).
Sure, Jordan Belfort begins as a mild-mannered kid with a dream, refusing lunchtime martinis and all, but most of us start out with a soul and a sense of self-control, until we reach a level so rarefied and powerful that you never see any consequences or hardships, and you're cushioned and gratified so completely in a world of leisure and lavishness that whether or not you put the country in debt or screw a few working-class people doesn't really feel like it makes much difference.
As long as the class divides are that wide, that will always be the case. We are constantly baffled by the total lack of conscience in the actions of the 1% and the politicians they puppeteer, but at the same time they honestly must feel that underprivileged people are that way because they choose to be, or simply aren't as smart as them. It's a catch-22 and the only thing we can do, Scorsese says, is laugh at it.