The heart of brightness

Rating: 10/10 (30 January 2014)

Trust and integrity: These are the values a TV commercial proclaims with which The Wolf of Wall Street opens, presenting a brokerage firm as a hard-working, serious, honest service provider for those who want to invest their money in an efficient and successful way. Once the commercial ends, we get a glimpse into the company as it is: the scene opens to a raucous office hosting an orgiastic party complete with dwarf tossing, sex, alcohol and more than enough drugs to last a lifetime. Based on the true story of fraudulent stock broker Jordan Belfort, the film dives deeply into the heart of what is wrong with an economy that has embraced greed as a key component of the way it works. Where J.C. Chandon's Margin Call was a cool analysis of the workings of a system that is based on no substance whatsoever and Oliver Stone's second incarnation of Wall Street is a thriller depicting the workings of personal greed, Martin Scorsese presents the economy of greed as an orgiastic and never-ending feast that devours everything else, in which money is the drug of drugs and is equivalent with success, sex, life. A parallel world following its own rules and totally disconnected with the outside world it so drastically affects.
As in his classic gangster tales, Scorsese chooses the inside perspective. And so we watch Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio in an earth- shattering performance) as he rises from small Wall street apprentice, mentored by a slick and yet charming veteran broker (perfect cliché and compelling personality: Matthew McConaughey), to the master of stock fraud, committed entirely to his firm's – and his own – prosperity, which he achieves mostly by duping investors into deals that can only have one winner: Belfort and his posse. The film's most disturbing aspect is how it commits itself to following the special logic on which this world is turning. Drawn into the vortex of success and admiring the brilliant strategy Belfort follows, the viewer only gradually understands that there is world outside, full of defrauded clients who lose their mortgages, their children's college money, their homes, their livelihoods, They never appear, yet the longer the film continues, the more their presents is felt, the more they weigh on the glamorous world of eternal success.
A world that Scorsese paints in the brightest colors: The Wolf of Wall Street is an orgiastic film portraying an orgiastic universe in which money is everything. Whether it is wild partying, boundless sex, limitless drug use or the everyday work at the office: this is a life on speed, fast-paced, constantly seeking out extreme, a permanent high which cannot afford a coming down. All is one, whether the brokers frantically call their "clients", whether they have a totally out of control orgy on a plane, discuss "dwarf tossing" in the most cynical way imaginable or turn the serious business of how to get their money abroad into a sex-filled extravaganza: sex, money, "love", drugs are all part of the same permanent rush that allows for no other reality than the one they have created themselves. Apart from DiCaprio who delivers the performance of his life, Jonah Hill impresses as Belfort's even more out of control sidekick, a virtuoso of everything extreme. There are no morals in this world and there cannot be any, only one easy answer: money is everything.
Scorsese spares no details, the film is graphic and at the same time way over the top. The story-telling as well as the visuals occasionally have a comic book touch. Realism isn't Scorsese's goal, what he tries to achieve is to convey how it must feel to live inside this bubble. This includes the danger of making it feel desirable: a trap Scorsese skillfully plays with and avoids. The more the spiral spins, the more grotesque this world becomes, the more that initial fascination is replaced with unease and ultimately disgust. The turning point is a long scene in which DiCaprio and Hill, looking for the ultimate high, descend into a hell of crawling, mumbling and completely spinning out of any remnants of self-control, a long scene lasting several minutes that will enter film history as the most uncompromising as well as imaginative and equally comical as well as devastating depiction of a drug-induced state of mind ever.
From here, it's downhill but Scorsese is smart enough not to gives us a happy or even moral ending. Despite going to jail for a few years, his Belfort is on top of the world again as a highly successful author and motivational speakers, once again pulling his old tricks. The film ends with Belfort's apparent nemesis, FBI agent Denham (Kyle Chandler) riding a New York City subway train, a dreary and totally unglamorous scene with no sense of triumph or satisfaction. The order has been restored, the gamblers rule and justice is little more than a drop in the ocean, with no effect or long-term consequence. The Wolf of Wall Street is a crazily funny comedy that ends on a quiet and bitter note, a wildly colorful yet deeply honest film that beneath the craze and behind the parallel universe it depicts conceals a stark reality that presents itself even more strongly in its absence. Yet again, Martin Scorsese has come to the core of what makes the world work and delivers yet another masterpiece.
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