“Well, Hector, here’s the game plan. You’re gunna bring us
two Absolut Martinis, you know how I like them, straight up. And then precisely
seven and one-half minutes after that you’re gunna bring us two more. Then, two
more after that every five minutes until one of us passes out,” says Mark
Hanna, the excessive and delusional stockbroker played by Mathew McConaughey in
Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street.
McConaughey’s character becomes a role model for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan
Belfort who relishes in overindulgence and crude, dumb antics. The movie is
filled with moments like this and portrays the undeserving lavish lifestyle
that the con-artist-disguised-as-stockbroker Belfort enjoys, and it is a
masterpiece.
With (among many other things) a lot of money, 2.8 uses of
the F-word per minute, money, the use of nearly every drug imaginable, fast
cars, fast women, more money, stripper parties in the workplace, and just simply
a shit-ton of money, TWWS is down and dirty fun. The problem is that not
everybody sees it that way. This movie isn’t old-fashioned, it doesn’t follow
the formula for structure, it’s fast paced 100% of the time, it’s edgy, it’s
raunchy, and (generally) those that will pay money to watch a movie about
stockbrokers aren’t the biggest fans of raunchy and edgy.
The movie is criticized for its glorification of the immoral
and the lack of traditional resolution showing the downfall of someone living
this lifestyle. However, with it’s ambiguous ending we are left to decide for
ourselves whether or not the illustrious and too-big-to-fail-or-be-punished
Jordan Belfort actually changes or not. Just like human nature there is no
black or white, there is no single point in which the character has a historic
transformation, there is no absolute demise or unending success. Just like real
life the movie has a mixture of both. And although not all of us are
drug-crazed sex addict con artists, all of us change over time, all of us live
through successes and failures, and all of us have the power to turn one into
the other. The Wolf of Wall Street
isn’t a meaningless celebration of superfluous living, it is a metaphor.
