Ringing in the New Year with The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) and a Semi-Hiatus

Well, in actuality, I rang in the New Year with being stranded due to a lost car key. I had been visiting some friends in Ann Arbor on New Year’s Eve. Somewhere along the way, I lost my keys there and had no luck in finding them, not at the coffee shop or restaurant or friends’ apartments where I had been, not at the spot where I had slipped on ice when the keys could have fallen out of my pocket, and no one had turned anything in to the police. There were plenty of glasses and car keys, but not a single one was mine.

I was an hour away from home by freeway, and the polar vortex brought in sub-zero temperatures and three days of snow that prevented anyone from getting a spare car key from home to me. It wasn’t awful. We mostly just hung around for a couple of days, and I ended up seeing American Hustle again on New Year’s day, though after that, I don’t think I plan on watching it again for at least six months, no matter how much I love Amy Adams. A friend of mine eventually delivered the spare key to me once the weather cleared up a bit a couple of days later, and we ended up seeing The Wolf of Wall Street that night after I’d gotten home.

The Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

Martin Scorsese’s latest is based on the memoirs of Jordan Belfort, a stockbroker who amassed wealth through means of dubious legality—i.e., it’s not. Leonardo DiCaprio portrays Belfort from his start as a cold caller at an investment bank to his rise and fall as the founder and head of the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont. There may not be gangsters involved, but I am reminded of Goodfellas and Casino. It’s a crime story that begins in media res with an anti-hero protagonist as the narrator; it depicts the allure of crime and easy money but also the loss of morality sets the characters on the path to the eventual loss of their livelihoods after reaching unprecedented heights.

It’s also much funnier than either of those Scorsese movies I just mentioned and completely insane. I mean, one of the first scenes has a workplace in completely chaotic celebration, and people are being thrown at a huge target board. There’s also a scene where DiCaprio throws a lobster a at Kyle Chandler.

Leonardo DiCaprio about to throw a lobster at Kyle Chander (off-screen) in The Wolf of Wall Street. I couldn’t find a decent picture of this shot online, so I took a screencap of the trailer.

Belfort begins on Wall Street as a relatively idealistic broker in the months before the stock market crash of 1987, but his first firm’s boss Mark Hanna (Matthew McConnaughey) takes him out for lunch at an expensive restaurant to disabuse him of the notion that he should actively look out for the clients’ well-being. The right way to go is through self-interest and a lifestyle of sex, drugs, and debauchery. Lying to them is even acceptable. The finance sector’s goal is to make money first and foremost; money trickles to the clients, not the other way around. If the clients get rich; that’s incidental.

Following this advice, Belfort engages in a lifestyle that if it were described as debauched, it would be an understatement. The three-hour long film covers roughly a decade of his life, through two marriages, stock fraud and money laundering ploys, and a lot of hard-partying and drug abuse. And I do mean a lot.  He fosters the same culture of excess at his firm that he does in his personal life. Employees regularly take cocaine and Quaaludes, and no office party is complete without prostitutes and strippers. Scorsese depicts Belfort’s work and personal parties as carnivals with pet monkeys and marching bands at their tamest, and drug-fuelled, modern-day Roman orgies at their most excessive.

Funnily enough, DiCaprio has had two movies released in one year in the role of someone who attains wealth through illegal means and enjoys throwing extravagant parties (the other, The Great Gatsby, was a very different kind of movie). He’s quite good at it too, bringing charisma to the screen and cockiness plus humor to the narrative voice. He is lively and energetic, as if after so many serious, dramatic roles, he’s finally letting himself go. When he delivers speeches to his colleagues, he commands their respect and has the stature of a beloved leader speaking to his constituents at a political rally. He also gives one of the greatest tirades ever related to Benihana, and I have not laughed this much at angry ranting since Pete Campbell from the sixth season of Mad Men. It’s a very entrancing and fun performance.

Belfort’s activities and wealth attract the attention of the law, and Kyle Chandler plays the morally upright FBI agent who heads the investigation, providing one of the film’s conflicts. It seems almost like with this and his roles as CIA officials in 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, he is the guy casting directors pick for supporting roles as mid-level government officials, and he’s such righteous-seeming guy that it’s hard not to picture him as a respectable, by the book, official in intelligence and law enforcement agencies. That said, he was also great with his grounded but sad performance as an unrepentant, negligent, alcoholic dad in The Spectacular Now from last year, so I hope he doesn’t become the go to guy for government bureaucrat type roles.

Jonah Hill is one of the highlights of the film as Belfort’s closest business associate Donnie (based on Stratton Oakmont co-founder Danny Porush). Hill and DiCaprio make a great duo here, with Hill providing a more unhinged counterpart to DiCaprio’s Belfort. A favorite scene in the movie that also shows DiCaprio’s comedic talents involves… well, there’s no point in spoiling the punchline, so let’s just say these two took too many Quaaludes, and there was a lot of slurred speech and bad driving and almost dying (but not from the driving). There are also dramatic moments later on that illustrate the strength of their friendship. They are terrible people, but their camaraderie is endearing, but they are still terrible people.

More or less everyone in Wolf of Wall Street is horrible, except for Kyle Chandler’s character and Belfort’s first wife. The partying, humor, and glamour on the film’s part are as much artifice as the outward appearance of respectability that Belfort and his associates command. To the outside world, they are people to aspire to, and wealthy and successful because the system works. After an article is published titled “Wolf of Wall Street” that describes Stratton Oakmont and its founder in a negative light, young men line up to apply at the firm.

Belfort had taken his mentor Mark’s words to heart, and though he and his associates may be wealthy, many of his clients were victims of fraud who had been taken advantage of. There is a moment when an employee of his talks about how Belfort gave her a chance and helped her go from struggling single mother to achieving tremendous wealth, and he presents this and the wealth of his firm as the essence of America. Yet it’s an institution built on unethical and immoral acts, leaving behind plenty of unmentioned victims and, hey, who cares, we’re rich. In this way, Stratton Oakmont becomes the paradigm of success and wealth for a few at the expense of the many.

We witness homophobia and sexism (despite the presence of female employees) in the characters’ treatment of a gay maid and the way they barely acknowledge women as human beings. Neither is limited to the firm or even the time period, but the firm’s culture reinforces these attitudes. Belfort is callous as he shrugs off the deaths of his friends and business associates, and he only cares because it appeared that his money laundering is at stake. In arguably some of the darkest moments, he commits an act of rape, batters his wife, and tries to abduct his daughter. With the exception of what I described in that last sentence, the majority of the film’s presentation is fun and comedic. Yet I don’t feel that it’s done in a way to glorify these characters or make light of what they have done. There is humor, but a lot of it is dark, and making the film fun might be the only way to make a film centered on these people palatable and satirize their lifestyle of excess without becoming preachy and analytical (and risk creating emotional disconnect or boredom).

It’s somewhat appropriate that The Wolf of Wall Street and American Hustle had such close release dates. They feel like companion pieces, yet Wolf is kind of like an anti-American Hustle. Both are extravagant, comedic period films about con artists that portray individuals affected by one economic crisis or the other (Oil Embargo, Black Monday of 1987), with cynicism toward institutions and society. They both deal with events in recent history yet feel appropriately modern, but American Hustle is more concerned with using thematic relevancy and setting to pit characters and their agendas against one another. It’s thoughtful but not heavy on social commentary and makes the protagonists out to be relatively sympathetic. It was a rather light film with a crowd-pleasing conclusion that offered quick resolutions for the protagonists, so they could get out of their predicaments and put their affairs in order.

Conversely, beneath the humor and glamour, The Wolf of Wall Street contains plenty of anger and indictment for a culture of self-interest and greed arising that reached a new level of toxicity in the 1980s, linking it to current problems. A set of values passed on from Hanna to Belfort, but endemic to the institutions themselves, led to the defrauding of countless individuals over the course of almost a decade. There might not be as much attention paid to the victims of financial fraud, but Scorsese draws comparisons between Belfort and associates to Wall Street prior to the Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008, which for many would be hard to forget. On top of that, we also see the damage Belfort causes to everything he touches. He might not remember his actions or acknowledge that his white collar crimes had victims, because he was either too high or lived in too insular of a bubble to realize it, but the film holds him accountable. He might have gone “straight,” both in the film and in real life, but Scorsese offers the film’s Belfort no redemptive arc. In a shot that implicates the general public, the film compares the masses that attend Belfort’s seminars, looking up to him for advice on how to acquire wealth, to those who applied to work at Stratton Oakmont in spite of or because of the firm’s notoriety. Scorsese offers an indictment of a society that venerates individuals like Belfort and their values, their single-minded pursuit of wealth at the expense of morality or empathy.

Semi-hiatus

I say semi-hiatus because I won’t stop writing completely, just not as much. I wanted to focus more on reading this year, as it is an important part of developing writing skills. Perusing articles is one thing, but I haven’t really touched a lot of literature or prose since early summer of 2013, and there is a growing backlog of books that I’d like to get through.

A few of those are historical, including Barbara Tuchman’s account of the outbreak of the First World War The Guns of August, , Russian writer Vassily Grossman’s World War II novel Life and Fate, and John le Carré’s Cold War thriller The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Deviating from themes of warfare but not from the historical or political, there is Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers, set in the mid-1970s and dealing with artists and radicalism from New York to Italy. There’s also Raymond Chandler’s detective novel The Big Sleep and Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbera’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan. The latter is supposed to be something of a genre-bender, part mystery and part a story about modernity. The author is a Michigan native who now lives in San Francisco, so he’s more or less living my dream.

Writing is time-consuming. I enjoyed writing this blog, which started out as a hobby to pass the time in between applying for jobs before becoming a regular thing I did, but now I work 40 hours a week on overnight shift and have been feeling more easily fatigued. It seems like a decent time for a break. The Wolf of Wall Street, Inside Llewyn Davis, and American Hustle had been big end-of-the-year film events for me, and having written about them, I think this is as good of a note to make this my last post for a while as any.

American Hustle (2013): Cynicism, Idealism and the American Dream

David O. Russell’s American Hustle is the story of people trying to survive at a time of economic and social malaise—after a period of economic crisis (Oil Crisis), an unpopular war (Vietnam), government scandals, with youthful idealism and activism on the decline and the government in deficit—of the conflict between belief in the American Dream and cynicism toward American institutions. The setting may be the late 1970s, but the movie, though it is really more entertaining than profound, couldn’t have come at a better time.

Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Bradley Cooper in American Hustle

Christian Bale and Amy Adams are Irving and Sydney, con artists who run an embezzlement scam by pretending to be art dealers and investors with “London banking connections” through Sydney’s British aristocrat Edith Greensly persona. They are fairly successful until they are caught and pressured into service by ambitious FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper) to arrest other con artists. Their ploy to seek out potential phony investors eventually grows into Operation Abscam, a sting operation against Mayor Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner) members of the U.S. Congress, and the mafia.

A recurring theme throughout is survival through struggle and subterfuge, with the hopes of building a better life and future. Beginning the story in media res with the operation already underway, Russell wastes no time in establishing the tension in the trio, as Richie and Irving not only battle over methods but also for the affections of Sydney. Yet minutes later, like a frazzled candidate about to walk into a job interview, they must present themselves as amiable business associates as they meet the mayor for the first time to guarantee the operation’s success.

As the movie delves into the origins of Sydney and Irving’s association, it is revealed that Sydney was a stripper who moved to New York to gain a fresh start and works as a clerk at Cosmopolitan magazine. Irving was the son of a small business owner who fell on hard times, and in order to help his father’s ailing business, a glass shop, he went around town smashing windows to create demand. Over time he came to run a dry cleaning business while dealing in forged art on the side. They become lovers and eventually partners in crime after meeting at a party, all the while he struggles to maintain his marriage with his wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) and an image of legitimacy.

Rosalyn is a skilled con artist in her own right. Her outward appearance is classy and the life of the party. Domestically, she is jealous, manipulative, and highly unstable, and Irving appeases her because he knows that she would take away her son, his beloved stepson, if they became divorced. Though he wants to keep her out of his business, she unknowingly forces her way into Operation Abscam by through a convoluted series of events making a good first impression on the Polito family and becomes invited to subsequent social events while trying to get closer to the elites.

The film maintains that the world is one of “gray” morality, and as much as it’s a cliché to say, it is portrayed not necessarily in depth but nevertheless convincingly. Operation Abscam begins by targeting Mayor Polito, a newly elected mayor who helped to legalize gambling and is seeking funds to renovate a building for the casino, in order to lead to get to bigger targets. Yet the charismatic mayor, despite charges of corruption, seems like an honest family man genuinely interested in reaching out to his community and helping the citizens as a public servant. That he seems willing to bend the rules and accept and give out bribes is one thing; that he genuinely wants to bring investment, jobs, and development to a poverty-stricken area is another. Perhaps he is indeed mostly altruistic, and it’s only the legalism of the FBI and the cynicism of the public, and of the audience by proxy, that is skeptical of him. Indeed, maybe his lack of political savvy is why he is so easily led into the trap, and why Irving has a crisis of conscious arising not just from the friendship that they share, but out of the belief that the mayor is a mostly good man who can build up the community.

By contrast, the law-upholding Richie becomes increasingly erratic and skirts the line legality to entrap and bring down corrupt officials. Even though he is engaged, he pursues an affair with “Edith” (Sydney manages to keep him ignorant of her real identity). Though he does not recognize it (or he does and simply does not care), he becomes corrupted as his ambition to advance his career combines with a desire to raise his social status.

Having established the setting and major players, Russell creates more of a character-based drama than a crime thriller. These individuals rub against one another, and battles of wits play out as conflicting interests clash, even as some ostensibly work with one another, as if in an elaborate game of Diplomacy.

The last movie I saw before American Hustle was Kill Your Darlings, another period piece that dealt with Allen Ginsberg’s year as a freshman student at Columbia and his friendship with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac that gave birth to the Beat literary movement. The characters’ energy and emotions felt genuine there, but the aesthetics were a bit ponderous. I know it was supposed to be partially a crime drama and all, but was almost a bit too gray and grimy. The visual aesthetics in American Hustle may be exaggerated, but the exaggerations in costumes, sets, and hairstyle bring the period to life; though not everyone might agree, I felt that they complemented the film without being distracting.

Although the subject matter is serious, the film possesses tremendous energy and sense of fun. There’s plenty of witty banter, lavish colors, and retro aesthetics that add authenticity to the setting, all accompanied by period-appropriate soundtrack. The characters and scenarios are outlandish, and unlike Ben Affleck did with last year’s Argo, which includes a ridiculous airport chase at the end, Russell makes no pretenses that it’s a factual account, beginning the film with, “Some of this actually happened.” I also enjoyed the cameo by Robert DeNiro (who really should just work with David O. Russell from now on) in a moment that recalls his earlier works. An anecdote that Richie’s hapless superior Stoddard Thorsen (Louis C.K.) keeps trying to tell but is interrupted every time by the eager agent also provides a running gag throughout the story.

American Hustle balances a multitude of characters and storylines, and between cynicism and hopeful sincerity. The worst thing I can say about is that it can be too frenetic. Russell juggles the many characters and storylines relatively well, and I don’t think I ever felt that the transition from one scene to another is awkward, but it does come at the expense of some character and thematic development, leading to a few quick, easy resolutions. Whether motivations and feelings are genuine are at times underexplored, or perhaps they are intentionally left opaque to reflect the characters’ moral ambiguity and the way they obscure facts for a living. The film is cynical toward institutions—legal ones in particular—and existing structures. It depicts the struggles of individuals and community that drive them toward underhanded methods, of the difficulties in being decent men in an indecent time. Nevertheless, each character expresses hope about the possibility of achieving a better life for oneself, and of building a better family and community. 30-some years after Abscam, David O. Russell has made a witty, clever, character-driven drama that captures the aspirations and anxieties of a bygone period and of ours.