The Wolf of Wall Street: A Film Review on Greed and Ethics, Study notes of Poetry

Download The Wolf of Wall Street: A Film Review on Greed and Ethics and more Study notes Poetry in PDF only on Docsity! Journal of Religion & Film Volume 18 Issue 2 October 2014 Article 2 10-1-2014 The Wolf of Wall Street Daniel Ross Goodman Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, danielrgoodmanesq@gmail.com This Film Review is brought to you for free and open access by DigitalCommons@UNO. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Religion & Film by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@UNO. For more information, please contact unodigitalcommons@unomaha.edu. Recommended Citation Goodman, Daniel Ross (2014) "The Wolf of Wall Street," Journal of Religion & Film: Vol. 18 : Iss. 2 , Article 2. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol18/iss2/2 The Wolf of Wall Street Abstract This is a film review of The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), directed by Martin Scorsese. Keywords The Wolf of Wall Street, Ecclesiastes, Ethics of the Fathers, Colossians, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Scorsese, Paradise Lost Author Notes Daniel Ross Goodman, a writer, lawyer, and rabbinical student at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (YCT) in New York, is editor-in-chief of Milin Havivin, the YCT Journal of Jewish Studies. His writings on art, religion, law, literature, and film have appeared in The Weekly Standard, Journal of Religion & Film, Religious Studies Review, Bright Lights Film Journal, Moment Magazine, South Texas Law Review, Haaretz, and Harvard Divinity School Bulletin. This film review is available in Journal of Religion & Film: https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol18/iss2/2 Midwestern cornfield, or a comedy-club audience watching a young pre-Seinfeld Jerry Seinfeld perform a stand-up set. Belfort is not just a natural; he could be the greatest salesman of all time. If a salesman is only out there “on a smile and a shoeshine,” as Willy Loman would have it, DiCaprio’s young Belfort is out there on a smile as scintillating as the light of a thousand suns, and with a shoeshine that could make the grimiest coal-miner’s loafers glow like green-and-white gold. Belfort soon realizes that he has the talent to go out on his own. He opens up his own penny stock-trading company, brands it with the faux-respectable name “Stratton Oakmont,” and recruits a home-grown crew of his own to join him. When he’s finally joined by the audacious Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) and begins collecting obscene (yet not quite enough—never quite enough—for him) gobs of money, he finally becomes “the Wolf of Wall Street.” But Belfort does not only live for money—he’s just as addicted, if not more so, to drugs and sex, and he and Azoff use their illicit earnings to fuel their drug-induced Quaalude-crazes and their profligate patronization of high-priced prostitution. Lest we think that Belfort was originally destined for this degree of depravity, the film informs us that he had the chance to take a different, more upright route, if not for having been taken under the wing of a fabulously foul-mouthed trader played by a scene-winning Matthew McConaughey. The masterful two-minute monologue he delivers to DiCaprio in the five- star Wall Street restaurant may be the film’s crucial scene, for it is here where we learn how the callow Belfort became so corrupted, and it is here where we learn that Belfort then deigned to become this devilish apprentice. 3 Goodman: The Wolf of Wall Street Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2014 It is an origin story akin to the one Milton appended to Satan, and indeed, one must turn to the Satan of Paradise Lost to find a villain as compelling, alluring, and irresistibly seductive as DiCaprio’s Belfort. But one must also turn to religion to find a puissant discipline sufficiently capable of controlling con men as slippery as Satan and Belfort. But Belfort not only lacks any discernable ethical code and moral scruple; he even lacks the self-awareness and the reflective capacities to heed the early warnings of the FBI agent (Kyle Chandler) to cease his sinful ways. The agent’s investigations should have served as sufficient admonishment, but Belfort’s Ahab-like obtuseness in ignoring the agent’s Elijah-esque implorings imperils Stratton Oakmont, and he persists in his avarice until it is too late to save himself and his friends from their self-inflicted doom. Scorsese’s latest film—yet another monumentous cinematic achievement in a career marked by many magnificent movies—certainly has its detractors, and they have pointed to the film’s seemingly excessive and allegedly gratuitous depictions of Belfort and his company’s flamboyant, lascivious lifestyle. The movie does feature inordinate amounts of sex, crudeness, and lewdness, but the blatant bacchanalia serves a purpose; like Hieronymus Bosch’s vivid depiction of the agonies of hell in The Garden of Earthly Delights (oil-on-wood; 1504), we need to see the full degree to which Belfort and his company flaunted their wealth in order to understand the depths of their depravity. By focusing on Belfort’s bottomless depravity in such a deep and sustained way, we are able to truly see the deleterious consequences of greed, envy, and unchecked desire. Belfort is a hopelessly ambitious and incorrigibly restless character, and his greed, desire, and lack of self-control eventually compromise his friends, his marriage, and his 4 Journal of Religion & Film, Vol. 18 [2014], Iss. 2, Art. 2 https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol18/iss2/2 very life. His satanic enthusiasm is seductively contagious, and his lavish lifestyle may be attractive, but in the end, because he cannot contain his greedy desire, it devours him alive. As Scorsese himself says about Belfort, “the devil comes with a smile”. 5 Goodman: The Wolf of Wall Street Published by DigitalCommons@UNO, 2014