Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street

Was at a screening today, and thought it was a delight. I'll write more at a later stage, but it's a playful and cartoonish portrait of excess gone wild. It very much parallels with the 'real world', but in Scorsese's hands it becomes a deliriously cinematic exaggeration. A film full of unrepentant assholes and con-men, the main one of which frequently breaks the fourth wall to even speak down to the audience like we're just more scum to prey on (although, in DiCaprio's remarkably charismatic work in his motivational speeches to his employees, you'll be forgiven for briefly being lured in by his twisted, greedy ideology). Scorsese directs with an energy rarely seen in multiplexes, and while it might not quite be his most stylistically original film, himself and Schoonmaker ensure it's very rarely less than viscerally crafted; the sometimes restless, sometimes serene camera reflecting the moods of the drug-fuelled highs and lows of the characters, and as ever the music choices are delightful. It is also, most certainly, a comedy: the sequence was an inspired burst of vivid, bizarre cinematic slapstick, DiCaprio almost chanelling Buster Keaton for a couple of scenes. McConaughey's fleeting but giddy appearance is also another win for a man whose career was once most notable for having the leaniest posters in cinema history. Overall, it's probably overstretched and repetitive, some sequences lingering longer than they strictly need to: but it's big, bold, lively and obscene tale that offers so many pleasures.

As for those ongoing accusations that it's a celebration of excess that have forced DiCaprio and others to defend the film? Some critics have simply failed to revise the chapter on "representation does not equal endorsement" again (almost a year to the day after those ridiculous Zero Dark Thirty torture 'debates'). The ugly misogyny, homophobia, greed, arrogance and recklessness of these characters has even been amplified beyond the realms of reality (although, sadly, it's probably not far of the truth) to ensure there's no doubt we're actively encouraged to disapprove: there's a scene where they refer to dwarves as 'things', forchrissake :pac:. Yes, there's no real or omnipresent moral centre or corrupted innocent, the way you'd get in other films: but there is absolutely no condoning, and frankly anyone who thinks this is a feverish ode to the joys of wealth must have been watching a different film than I saw this morning. Martin's done good.