This one must go down in the annals of American movie-making as one of the most self-indulgent movies about over-indulgence. With a grandiose title, A-list actors and based-on-a-true-story subject matter, it is at its best, a flamboyantly savage comedy. We get scene after scene after scene of illicit drugs, kinky sex, and blatant lies, but the film gets terribly redundant very quickly. It could easily have been an hour shorter and lost absolutely nothing.
It is either savage comedy or a manifesto of twisted propaganda. The humiliation and objectification of women is presented in a most clear-cut and brutal manner, right from the moment Belfort trades his wife in for a bustier blonde, to the very many combinations of sexual gratification that may be sought out thanks to the women who help execute them.
The only thing that makes the movie compelling is that perhaps some people want to be just like De Caprio’s Belfort. Many Americans wish to believe that anyone can become rich if they want it bad enough. The only reason that people are poor is that they are lazy and the government interferes with the great invisible hand. And the implication is that with great industriousness comes corruption that unfortunately knows no bounds and that is oblivious to the eventual pain and suffering of the innocent.
De Caprio does a fine job of projecting all this drama. And Jonah Hill is a fine accompanist. Yet with all of the pain the drugs and the deception cause, there is, alas, never a trace of atonement or redemption — of sympathy for pains caused, to self or others. And that is disturbing, and it kept this off a “human” scale that leaves me unsettled, and not quite as satisfied as some other Scorsese films have. But perhaps, that is point?
A.O. Scott of the New York Times sums it up best like this: Does “The Wolf of Wall Street” condemn or celebrate? Is it meant to provoke disgust or envy? If you walk away feeling empty and demoralized, worn down by the tackiness and aggression of the spectacle you have just witnessed, perhaps you truly appreciate the film’s critical ambitions. If, on the other hand, you ride out of the theater on a surge of adrenaline, intoxicated by its visual delights and visceral thrills, it’s possible you missed the point. The reverse could also be true. To quote another one of Mr. Scorsese’s magnetic, monstrous heroes, Jake LaMotta, that’s entertainment.
