I might be misreading, but I hate this kind of critique. You caught a point that the movie was trying to make, and therefore it somehow didn't make it?

If you're looking to Scorsese to make grandiloquent statements about the world, then you're doing it wrong. This movie is a cinematic orgasm in the same way Goodfellas was. If that's not your thing, then it's not. To call it pointless is missing the point yourself.

And it's far from pointless anyway, but we can get into that.

Good movie, but a minor leaguer that is actually "trying" much harder than WOWS.

who are you and what did you do with Dominic

The movie has a problem making a point because it's simultaneously trying to coddle its protagonist while 'critiquing' him. If putting Belfort's life on screen is supposed to be such a scathing critique of Wall Street, then actually SHOW the harm. In every scene where Belfore is actually hurting someone - i.e., when he's cheating on his first wife with the Duchess and his wife catches him in the limo with her, the movie pulls back and does this wide-angle shot of Belfort and his first wife SO YOU DON'T ACTUALLY SEE HER TEARS. Likewise, they accomplish the same trick by creating Belfort as an 'unreliable' narrator, i.e., you only see him see him harrassing the stewardesses on the plane when he's utterly high as a flashback, same with the scene where he's crashed his car on the way back from the country club. The movie never shows Belfort actually being an ******* directly to someone until the very end with the Duchess and the rape scene (which is still cut to make him look not as bad, when he punches her in the stomach, they're in shadow) and he steals his daughter and crashes the car. He's only made to look like an ******* through association with his cronies like Jonah Hill etc. who are shown to be doing nasty things in real time, i.e., beating up the butler, eating that poor broker's goldfish, etc.

I'm sorry, but I don't see how that audience panning shot at the end of the movie is any kind of indictment of anything when the movie is not set up for that kind of thing at all.

Hey, Ilked Wolf. Just thought it was ultimately empty. Plus, it encourages rape, ldo.

lol feminism

Should be bannable.

I finally saw the movie. That's rape to me.

But the point of "depraved character does incredibly depraved act" kind of holds true. I guess I don't see how that scene is much different than a lot of the other (very intended) misogyny in the movie.

That scene made me feel much weirder than a lot of the other scenes though, so there's that.

This whole paragraph is basically saying you're mad because the makers didn't make the movie you would like to see.

For example the bolded: why? Why do we need to SEE the harm - are we not smart enough to realise/understand it's there? The movie tells the misogynistic adventures of a misogynistic scumbag through the tinted eyes of said misogynistic scumbag (which is also why we see the car crash / stewardess harrassment etc through his eyes). Why would such a movie need a morale, or 'both sides of the story', or anything like that. That is not the goal of the movie, nor should it be. Nor does it make the movie 'misogynistic' in nature - it mainly tells a story through the eyes of the protagonist and leaves the judgement to the viewer.

FWIW, I didn't particularly like the movie.

I wasn't even addressing the misogyny of the movie in the post you quoted so I'm not addressing it here.

Like I said before, I have a problem with DiCaprio/Scorsese claiming that the movie is sharply critical of its main protagonist and his lifestyle when it quite clearly isn't. It doesn't really show you how bad Jordan Belfort really is because it coddles him through those cinematic tricks I mentioned. How can they claim that the audience should be the ones judging when they're not even given all the evidence to judge in the first place?

Yes, I get what you're saying as "it's shown through his eyes". But ask yourself this, why just those scenes? (I'm sure there's a couple others I can't remember too where they used this device.) They first introduce the technique innocuously enough when Jordan's remembering his fancy car as first red, no then white. The movie takes great pains to show how self-destructive Jordan is to himself (quaaludes scene at the country club/his home being the prime example), but yet they suddenly turn the soft focus on whenever Jordan hurts others. It makes the message of the movie really muddy because it seems like the filmmakers do really want to critique Wall Street and its excesses while at the same time try to coddle their protagonist from too much criticism. It end up really saying nothing, which I guess is fine.

Just my .02.

Hehe. I love it

Indeed the 'critique' isn't spoonfed to the viewer or even explicit, but merely showing the thoughts / actions of the protagonist is IMO already a critique in itself, in that those actions kinda 'speak for themselves'. Kinda like how a documentary about Hitler only showing his viewpoints, thoughts, and actions, without ever showing a holocaust victim, would not be considered glorifying or coddling of its protagonist. We don't have to SEE Auschwitz to realise the evil nature of it all.

I think there are mainly two categories of people who think this movie is a glorification of the protagonist and his lifestyle: people who are already attracted to this life / already living it (the real Jordan belforts and wannabes), who do not recognize the degeneracy, the destruction, and the suffering, and people who, in advance, were already looking for reasons to label the film glorifying / misogynistic / coddling. Most people I know saw a movie that tells the story of a degen wall street yuppie, as it was experienced by that yuppie himself, in as entertaining a way as possible, and realised that that life isn't really something to strive for (to put it mildly).

I also didn't recognize the clear discrepancy you mention between showing pain he inflicts on himself and when he hurts others. That could be me not having enough attention to detail, or maybe you wanting to see something that isn't really there? No offense intended, honest question.

It's a movie for flip's sake. How did everyone get so coddled by political correctness in the last 20 years? The definition of misogyny has been stretched so thin by feminists and liberals, it's a total joke now.

@aamer_rahman 4h
How convenient that we can celebrate greed through films like #wolfofwallstreet while simultaneously berating hip-hop for promoting excess.

I agree with the first sentence. I do think that movies now a days are taken to seriously. Feature films are meant for entertainment. Obviously movies would be boring if they were not thought provoking and didn't focus on topics that hit close to home, but at the same time i think that a lot of directors take it to far and the movie ends up being more of political than entertaining. In the case of WOW I blame it on the media more than Scorsese. They are blowing it out of proportion. I mean he made a great and very entertaining film, and people are focusing more on asking if it glorifies Jordan Belfort, than they are on asking if it is an entertaining movie.

Directors are not journalist. Its not a directors job to remain objective and show both sides of a subject, their job is to make the most entertaining film possible for their target audience, obviously i would have a problem with this movie if it was target towards 12 y/os. I have heard the term "irresponsible film-making" I don't think that term even makes sense lol unless you are talking about being irresponsible on the set, DWF drinking while filming.

I understand that people might think that claiming a movie is just meant to be entertaining can be a co-pout, IMO it shouldn't have to be, directors shouldn't have to answer questions like the ones being asked here.


Bottom line I just think that movies should be seen and taken for what they are, entertainment.

Are you suggesting that it would be impossible to make a movie that is attracted to Belfort because the mere depiction of him onscreen is necessarily a condemnation?

No, I’m saying that objectively depicting his actions and thoughts (even without commenting/judging) is not glorifying or supporting him. Of course it’s possible to make a coloured movie that shows him in a better light, just like it’s possible to make propaganda movies for the most horrid political regimes known to mankind. WOWS doesn't do that though.

Also, would someone like to talk about the speech where he is about to step down from S-O but changes his mind mid-speech? Its ends with the story of Kimmy, the single mother who he hired and fronted 25k for. Its clearly the key passage in the script, and also seems to depict Belfort at his most aspirational, but has gone basically unremarked upon in discussions of the film both here and among critics.

That scene coupled with the wire note to Donnie did the most to inform my reading of the movie. Its a modern gangster movie, and like many gangster movies its about family. Belforts adoptive family is Stratton-Oakmont, and he goes to absurd lengths to enrich and protect them, without any regard for anyone outside the family.

Family? How is Kimmy considered 'family'? That scene, which if I remember correctly is in the last 30 mins of the movie, is our very FIRST introduction to the character of Kimmy, who has 2-3 lines and then effectively disappears again from the rest of the movie. She's just a cheap gimmick character.

Except it disproportionately shows the cooler aspects of his life. Even if the stuff that is shown is all true (and let's be honest, it's based on a book written by an obvious self promoter) leaving out all the negative consequences of Belforts actions is providing the audience with a biased view of the man.

I don't think Scorsese is obligated to do anything than make the movie that he wants but I think it's fair to say that the depiction of Belfort is extremely biased and I don't see why people have such a hard time admitting they enjoyed a movie about a douchey character power tripping precisely because they wanted to live vicariously through that depiction of the mans life.

In reality Belfort didn't try and save his family from ruin, he sold them out quick and easy.

Only after his comical attempt to save them (passing notes to Donnie while wearing a wire) falls through. I'm not claiming he's a good guy; he sells them out eventually to save himself, but only when he has no other choice.

Of course it's biased, it's based on the man's autobiography. That doesn't mean the picture painted is favorable or supportive to the protagonist.

Am I misunderstanding the bolded or is this an extremely judgmental, narrow-minded view on anyone who enjoyed the movie?

If I remember correctly that happened in the movie but not IRL.

This whole thread really confuses me. The answer to the thread title IMO is: both. I think the WoWS is pretty clearly about our collective cognitive dissonance as a society re: these Wall Street and Ultra-Rich Corporate tycoons. We simultaneously condemn and idolize their excess. We open the newspaper and get angry when we read about some corporate scandal where some guy gets away scott-free with $100MM, then turn on the TV and watch "The Secrets Lives of the Ultra Rich" so we can marvel at all their material possessions. As long as we keep letting them get away with it, they'll keep ****ing us. It's really more of a critique on us as a society than the Wall Street low-lifes (that's low-hanging fruit, after all).

And this is the crux of my argument, we view his life as entertaining escapism and not as the destructive life style it truly was because the entertaining parts were embellished and the negative aspects of his life were down played, that's a glorification of the mans life.

There is nothing wrong with enjoying a movie that glorifies the power trip that some people get to live through, but we should at least acknowledge what the film is doing and be honest with ourselves why we like it. It's the same reason we cheer on characters like Walter White when he eludes his family and the law, a certain part of us wishes we could experience what it's like to be completely free from social constraints.