The Wolf Of Wall Street

The Wolf of Wall Street is the first Martin Scorsese film in a long time that feels like it will join Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and GoodFellas in the canon in a few years' time. It arrives with all the excitement that Casino did, but it doesn't quite provide what many of us were hoping for, and for some, it may take some getting accustomed to.

The tone is much straighter than we've come to anticipate, with longer, more intimate sequences and a far higher emphasis on screenplay, even though it starts with a sprinkle of the customary visual fireworks. The Wolf of Wall Street's oddest feature is also its most unusual for a Scorsese film: it's wonderfully, incredibly humorous. Another noteworthy aspect of Scorsese's 23rd feature is how effortless the comedy is, given that it is his first film since 1999's Bringing Out the Dead, which is equally rich in black humor and doesn't appear to be made to an Academy agenda. The director's early enthusiasm returns in The Wolf of Wall Street. It's a massive film, but not as big as Scorsese's Gangs of New York, and it finally feels like Scorsese is examining the material and getting to the heart of the matter.

It features an antihero who pushes us to the very limits of our sympathies, just like the finest of Scorsese's work. Jake LaMotta, Rupert Pupkin, and Travis Bickle are all suspects, but Jordan Belfort may be the worst. And it's part of the film's genius, not only in Scorsese's direction but also in Leonardo DiCaprio's untouchable performance, that three hours in the company of a man who exploits the poor and wallows in outrageous wealth whizzes by.

It's possible that Scorsese has been searching around for a change. His Personal Journey series of documentaries famously end when he began creating films himself, so he doesn't have to evaluate his colleagues, but The Wolf of Wall Street has the air of a director looking for inspiration. Not only are there hints of his godchildren Tarantino and P. T. Anderson here, but there's also a sense that this isn't going to be a conventional Scorsese film. His camera stays in place longer than it used to, and despite the trailer's suggestion of a lot of twitchy raps, the needle drops are shorter and less prominent than normal.

DiCaprio is unquestionably at his best in this film, fully commanding his range and ability. The most evident indication of this is the slapstick elements. The sequence in which he tries to drive his car on antique Quaaludes is incredible, but it's difficult to see another actor pulling it off and then flawlessly transitioning back into Belfort's public role. Belfort has gone from charlatan to evangelist by the end of the movie, and it is his messiah mentality that leads to his demise. Nonetheless, we believe it as well, and this is what the movie excels at: even though Belfort is a love rat, a drug addict, and a con guy who preys on the poor, none of these things appear to matter.

In terms of the latter, the film plays fast and loose with its morality, establishing Belfort as the narrator of his own story to the point where Scorsese doesn't react when he crosses the line, which he does frequently. Instead, he thrusts our noses into the massive mountain of pharmaceutical cocaine that was Belfort's existence for a few years. And we inhale so deeply that it is only after the comedown that we begin to think about Jordan Belfort, what he did to earn his money and what he did with it. It's hardly a surprise to state that Belfort rose to prominence because of his notoriety, but The Wolf of Wall Street joins a small group of Scorsese films (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy) in which unstable persons become media celebrities because of their crimes and misdeeds.

It doesn't take a master's degree in film studies to figure out what's going on here, which is part of what makes The Wolf of Wall Street so compelling. Scorsese isn't waving his finger at Wall Street; rather, he's wagging it at us, providing a mirror of our messed-up reality. "Humor is tragedy plus time," as Mark Twain once remarked, and as far as historical warnings go, it doesn't get any timelier than this.