Wall Street's for the Wolves

Since I'm redoubling my efforts to see the movies that are getting Oscar buzz, I went to see The Wolf of Wall Street, which seemed to be getting pretty polarized responses. Here's my take: it's funny, it's scathing, and it's a little brilliant, but in shooting for comedy, it loses its edge just enough that the message gets muddled.

Wall Street's a brutal satire of capitalism and the cult of money, and in many parts of the movie it gets its point across. I loved the scenes at Stratton Oakmont, where everyday Americans foamed at the mouth, beat their chests, and screamed profanity, cursing everything but money. It was hilarity of the scary-but-true variety, and Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) acting like a televangelist healer at the head of all this money-worship wasn't lost on me.

As I thought about it in relationship to some of Scorsese's previous work, I started to think of Wall Street as a third part of an informal trilogy about American institutions--the other two parts being Goodfellas and Gangs of New York. All three involve a naive-but-talented protagonist climbing the ranks of an organization and getting seduced by its decadence. All three are also (in my opinion) a bit long and a bit meandering. But each takes a different slice of American history and deconstructs it. In theory, The Wolf of Wall Street is the culminating stroke in a series of important and intellectual films.

Here's the problem. The movie's marketed to college-age males, a fact that becomes obvious as you watch the trailers that play before it. I doubt, though, that most college guys are interested in a deconstruction of American materialism. I'd wager they're in it for the partying and the unclothed boobs, the sheer number of which discourages an effort to count them. But hey, if you want to see some naked chicks, I won't stop you--although, if that's what you want, you'll find more satisfying and time-efficient resources elsewhere. So why does The Wolf of Wall Street want to draw in an audience that's going to miss its point? Well, money. Isn't it ironic.

I'm not speculating either. Plenty of audiences have mistaken Scorsese's satire for sincerity. I recognize that a lot of people didn't meet the movie halfway, but at some point a filmmaker is accountable for whether his statement reaches the audience. Especially when the film is all about the statement, which Wall Street seems to be. My impression is that Scorsese had so much fun depicting the depravity of Belfort and his entourage that his enjoyment bleeds into the presentation, and as a result his film's bite is dulled.

I'd be surprised if a woman really liked this movie. Granted, the masses of hookers and strippers probably balance out the gender representation, but from a feminist perspective it's a complete bust. Let me throw it into sharp relief: not once in the entire movie do we hear a woman speak to another woman. Wall Street fails the most primitive element of the Bechdel Test. Shame on you, Mr. Scorsese. I refuse to believe that there was nowhere in the three hours of DiCaprio snorting crack off prostitutes' various body parts that you could have inserted two women having an audible conversation.

Maybe I was less impressed by Wall Street because its message isn't new or innovative to me. I'm pretty disgusted by the mundane materialism that I see every day, so watching a farcically heightened version of it didn't deepen that sentiment. It only blurred the line between this movie and any other inane, college-targeted sex comedy.

My recommendation? If you love Scorsese, you'll probably enjoy the movie. And don't get me wrong, it's hilarious--funnier than most of his stuff, and in the same style of half-hearted, twisted farce that's now pretty signature for him. But for my money (and time), I'd rather watch Goodfellas, which is less funny but twice as meaningful.