The Wolf of Wall Street

Saw The Wolf of Wall Street, a biopic about the rise and sort-of-fall of Jordan Belfort, day-trader.  The film depicts grotesque excess and outrageous law-flaunting.  It was fairly depressing for me.  I felt like it wasn't very satisfying but it was evidently reasonably accurate and the real world, alas, is often depressing.

The protagonist is this dude who only cares about money.  He parties and has sex with super-model ladies, stays high on the finest drugs, and lives in the biggest yachts and the biggest houses.  His life looks like a lot of fun, however the character is constantly staying just a hair's breadth out of trouble that his own excesses get him into.  He is tacky and empty.

I found the film depressing in its depiction of big-money excess.  The way the characters take pride in their foul mouths, in their lack of taste, in their willingness to lie and cheat to get a stock sale.  This is a life that, if I'm being honest, I probably wouldn't turn down, but one that's pointless.  The drugs they take short-circuit any need for meaning or fulfillment in their lives: just take another pill, you'll be fine.  This is a sour sort of dream that's being promoted, a boring sort of excitement that wears on you after a while.

So yeah there's that, but I also feel like there's an element of sour grapes in what I've written above.  His life looks a lot more fun than mine does if nothing else.  In the en of the film (spoilers here) he never really faces consequences, but that's true to life, I feel.  I think this is one of those films where if you're kind of upset and made uncomfortable by it, that means you were paying attention.

Then again, if the point is for us to be outraged, why is the outrageous behavior so entertaining?  This film came out in 2013 and in those happier times, I think no one really took the poisonous impact of greed and narcissism seriously.  The puckish protagonist is much less fun when he's the president.

The real life person that this film was based on apparently styled himself after Gordon Gekko from Wall Street (1987) who was himself based on an amalgam of stock brokers Oliver Stone knew.  Thus the culture celebrates and perpetuates itself.  Nowadays of course stock brokers are quaint relics of the 90s - replaced by high-frequency trading algorithms that don't even need cocaine.  The culture of Wall Street excess however has stayed alive in Silicon Valley and in those trading companies and whereaver money is to be made.  How depressing.