The Wolf of Wall Street and the Treachery of Moving Images (SPOILERS)
SPOILERS below the line
Zomg, the Wolf of Wall Street was awesome. And the most amazing thing was this one moment.
Near the end of the movie, Jordan drives his car to a country club, where he uses a pay phone to call his legal advisor, and then the Qaaludes kick in, and he limps back to his car, and drives home. Slowly and carefully. "It's a miracle I didn't hit anyone", he says. Then there's an interlude where he becomes Popeye and saves his friend from dying.
The very next scene, the police show up to arrest him. Why? They cut to his car, and they reveal that it's all smashed up. Jordan, our narrator, corrects himself. "Okay, maybe I didn't get home okay." Cut to a flashback of Jordan's drive home, now with crashes and recklessness.
That one scene is the strongest hint that you get, that Jordan is an unreliable narrator.
The central premise of The Wolf of Wall Street is that Scorsese is taking Jordan Belfort's memoir at face value. But there's so much of the story that doesn't quite make sense. Every scene is always set up to portray Jordan as the alpha male. He may do asshole things, but he's always unrepetant. In his own eyes, he's never done anything wrong.
But you can't trust Jordan. Jordan is a salesman who made his fortune by selling worthless stocks. He's an admitted liar. How can you trust anything that he says? Was this the one scene where Jordan's stream-of-consciousness narrative caught him in a lie so transparent, he had to back up and re-tell his own story? What about the other things?
What amazed me about the movie is not only what we see is played so straight, and so naturallly, and so strongly, that it's believable. ... And then there's that one key incident, the driving-home, that is the only brazen moment of unreliability.
Some critics have expressed concern that The Wolf of Wall Street glamorizes Jordan Belfort's lifestyle and his excessses too much, to make it look like something people might want to emulate. But that one incident, that one "miracle" drive-home, that is the key hint that everything you've just seen is an elaborate lie.
Heck, of course it's a lie -- it's a movie, with an actors and cameras and a script, all here to entertain you. This wasn't really happening. Maybe it was all one long con to string you along for a few hours.
Zomg, the Wolf of Wall Street was awesome. And the most amazing thing was this one moment.
Near the end of the movie, Jordan drives his car to a country club, where he uses a pay phone to call his legal advisor, and then the Qaaludes kick in, and he limps back to his car, and drives home. Slowly and carefully. "It's a miracle I didn't hit anyone", he says. Then there's an interlude where he becomes Popeye and saves his friend from dying.
The very next scene, the police show up to arrest him. Why? They cut to his car, and they reveal that it's all smashed up. Jordan, our narrator, corrects himself. "Okay, maybe I didn't get home okay." Cut to a flashback of Jordan's drive home, now with crashes and recklessness.
That one scene is the strongest hint that you get, that Jordan is an unreliable narrator.
The central premise of The Wolf of Wall Street is that Scorsese is taking Jordan Belfort's memoir at face value. But there's so much of the story that doesn't quite make sense. Every scene is always set up to portray Jordan as the alpha male. He may do asshole things, but he's always unrepetant. In his own eyes, he's never done anything wrong.
But you can't trust Jordan. Jordan is a salesman who made his fortune by selling worthless stocks. He's an admitted liar. How can you trust anything that he says? Was this the one scene where Jordan's stream-of-consciousness narrative caught him in a lie so transparent, he had to back up and re-tell his own story? What about the other things?
- Why is Jordan the hero of the choking scene? He's so stoned out of his gourd, he already misreported the drive home. How can he be trusted to report on anything from that night?
- When Jordan is rescued at sea, he mentioned that "the Italians know how to party", and the rescue boat shows people dancing. His near-death experience is followed by a casual party? And Jordan is the only person who sees the deadly plane crash out the window? That he indirectly caused by calling for the rescue? Heck, it's convenient he happens to be near a window to see it happen.
- When Jordan is supposed to concede control of his company, the scene is framed that everyone is too sad to see him leave. He tells the story of how he advanced an employee money so she could meet bills. Everyone cheers him on, so much so that the esprit de corps rises so much that he can't actually leave. He reneges and tells everyone he'll fight to the end. ... Did that really happen? Or did he just come out and refuse to quit?
- When Jordan hits his wife, the scene (as he describes it) is that she hits him, first. Is that how it happened, or is he telling it that way because he wants to excuse a documented abuse incident?
- During the night where Jordan has the Qaalude incident, Jordan's wife is shown as pregnant with a second child. Later, such as durding Jordan's house arrest, there's only one child in the family, but his wife is no longer pregnant. What happened?
- Also, during the house-arrest child-abduction scene, Jordan makes a specific point of showing us buckling up his child, and them himself, before he tries to drive away. However, they get into a crash, where they both hit their heads on the dashboard. While backing up. Only Jordan is shown bleeding, too. Is that the way the incident happened? Or is Jordan adding the buckle-up detail so he doesn't come off as a total asshole?
What amazed me about the movie is not only what we see is played so straight, and so naturallly, and so strongly, that it's believable. ... And then there's that one key incident, the driving-home, that is the only brazen moment of unreliability.
Some critics have expressed concern that The Wolf of Wall Street glamorizes Jordan Belfort's lifestyle and his excessses too much, to make it look like something people might want to emulate. But that one incident, that one "miracle" drive-home, that is the key hint that everything you've just seen is an elaborate lie.
Heck, of course it's a lie -- it's a movie, with an actors and cameras and a script, all here to entertain you. This wasn't really happening. Maybe it was all one long con to string you along for a few hours.