The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)
By Ciara Midreé — October 2, 2017
Let’s kick October off with the spookiest horror of all: capitalism. When I stepped into the theater to watch The Wolf of Wall Street, I figured I’d see a cautionary tale of how an 80s stock broker lost it all.
What I ended up seeing in this movie were the sickening delights of power and excess. There’s too much of this movie– it has a run time of 3 hours and everything that can happen does. You want a midget toss? Done. You want your main character snorting coke off his mistress? You got it. It’s the 80s and Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a Wall Street broker who gets whatever he wants while making millions from defrauding people. Belfort is wealthy, White, and wasted– and man is he inspired. It’s like watching The Godfather if the Godfather was coked up and skanky and never suffered any consequences. It’s like watching the rise of a debauched and glutinous Rome, only the fall never comes.
Somehow I did manage to get the lesson in the movie– power corrupts; bad guys actually have fun even though they shouldn’t; white collar crime is under prosecuted, and even when it is, it’s often just a slap on the wrist. When Belfort is finally prosecuted for his crimes, he gets sent to a prison that looks like club med. He ends up serving only a year and a half and goes on to make millions as a public speaker for, you guessed it, sales. Fairy tale ending, in my opinion. He doesn’t overcome anything. He doesn’t struggle with anything except for the challenges involved in hiding giant amounts of money and doing too many drugs.
Yet, even in my hatred of this person, I’m inspired. Even though Belfort’s privilege is positively revolting, I couldn’t help but feel pumped after I walked out of the theater. The Wolf of Wall Street is a rush to watch. I went to see this movie with my brother and I’m telling you we left that theater feeling like motherfucking lions and tigers and bears. Dammit.
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