Goya's The Third of May 1808 was greeted with cries of outrage: the painting is so disturbing, and no moral is provided. There were probably some people who felt validated by "All in the Family" patriarch Archie Bunker's worldview, who didn't get the irony, who didn't understand the critique. I want that." That's not up to us to control, and it's not up to Scorsese to try to caution us away from it. Maybe someone would be inspired by Belfort, and watch his shenanigans and think, "That looks great. Don't do this," is offensive to those of us who love full immersion into other worlds, who love ambiguity, who love to be given lots of space as audience members. Wanting a film to include gigantic neon arrows pointing down, saying, "This behavior is bad. Why doesn't Scorsese make it more clear that Belfort and his cronies were sexist pigs? Scorsese clearly endorses this kind of behavior." Whether or not "The Wolf of Wall Street" "endorses" Belfort's behavior is the least interesting way to read the film. It could be boiled down to: "Where is the moral outrage? The final scene is so ambiguous. The furor around "The Wolf of Wall Street" (in terms of "the discourse") was familiar territory, and nothing new for Scorsese. The bell jar of "The Wolf of Wall Street" is total.Īnd therein lay the problem for many. But to Belfort et al, their behavior is not despicable. Belfort and his cronies are seen doing despicable things, not just to their clients, but to women, dwarves, flight attendants, wives.
The voiceover calls to mind Ray Liotta's in " GoodFellas." We are co-conspirators. His tone overall is, "Can you believe the shit we got away with?" He strolls through the trading floor of his "firm," Stratton Oakmont, started in a garage on Long Island by a bunch of losers, reveling in his corruption, rolling in money and bullshit. Scorsese puts his film in Belfort's pocket, and Belfort ( Leonardo DiCaprio, in a career best) narrates, sometimes right in the middle of a scene. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is the story of Jordan Belfort, who pleaded guilty in 1999 to charges of stock market manipulation and fraud as the head of a bogus "firm" selling penny-stocks to suckers.
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