Jean Dujardin – Movie Musings

Greed is Good? Scorsese’s masterpiece is a heady deconstruction of the excess of white collar criminals

Director: Martin Scorsese

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio (Jordon Belfort), Jonah Hill (Donnie Azoff), Margot Robbie (Naomi Lapaglia), Kyle Chandler (FBI Agent Patrick Denham), Rob Reiner (Max Belfort), Jon Bernthal (Brad Brodnick), Matthew McConaughey (Mark Hanna), Jon Favreau (Manny Riskin), Jean Dujardin (Jean-Jacques Saurel), Joanna Lumley (Aunt Emma), Cristin Milioti (Teresa Patrillo), Christine Eberle (Leah Belfort), Kenneth Choi (Chester Ming), Brian Sacca (Robbie Feinberg), Henry Zebrowski (Alden Kupferberg)

All The Wolf of Wall Street is really missing is an early freeze frame of a coke-fuelled banker slamming the phone down on a closed deal and a wistful voiceover from Jordan Belfort: “As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be Wall Street trader”. If Goodfellas was Scorsese’s exploration of the attractions – and dangers – of a life in blue collar crime, then The Wolf of Wall Street is its white collar companion piece. The fact that so many viewers find the behaviour of Belfort morally outrageous in a way that no one ever objects about Henry Hill is, for me, an indication of how much we loath these masters-of-the-universe. For all their faults, we’d still rather see a violent criminal as one of us.

Based on Jordan Belfort’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) autobiography, The Wolf of Wall Street follows his time building a dodgy trading empire and a large fortune. Not that he can remember most of it, as he seems to be on a permanent intoxicated binge of drinks, hookers and every drug you can ever imagine (and some you can’t). The FBI catches up with him eventually, but Belfort learns precious little from his experiences. Other than, perhaps, that so long as you are rich and white in America, you can basically get away with anything.

That’s perhaps the key to Wolf of Wall Street. Scorsese may not shy away from the delicious dark comedy of Belfort’s life of excess, but it doesn’t blind him to the shallow awfulness of the man or his unthinking, instinctive greed and self-obsession. You would need to be a pretty shallow person to look at Belfort’s greed, moral emptiness and self-destructive binges and want to ape him. If you think watching DiCaprio literally paralytic on quaaludes is the life you want, frankly there is something wrong with you.

What perhaps made some feel Wolf of Wall Street was oddly in love with Belfort is its electric pace. The film is a brilliant reminder of Scorsese’s faultless understanding of pace. Or one who matches unparalleled cinematic skill with the rambunctious energy of a first-timer allowed to play with his movie toys for the first time. Brilliantly assembled, this is a superb collection of cinematic techniques, from jump cuts to fluid transitions that power through a series of increasingly bacchanalian parties and isn’t afraid to admit that, in the moment, this stuff can be fun (rather like getting the best table in Goodfellas) but ultimately self-destructive. (After all, few know the dangers of drugs like Scorsese.)

At the centre of this whirlwind is a stunning performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. With his still youthful, charismatic handsomeness, DiCaprio only needed to tweak his screen persona to provoke the sort of perverted idolatry Belfort receives from his co-workers. But he goes above and beyond in his transformation in this role. He makes Belfort simultaneously oddly childlike and revoltingly corrupted, someone whom we enjoy spending time with while finding repulsive. He rips through Belfort’s trademark, drug-fuelled motivational speeches, monologues of insanely eye-popping intensity, explosions of off-the-chain wildness. At other times he’ll sulk and whine like a spoilt child. DiCaprio struts across the screen with an unpredictable physicality – his embodying of the physical effects of mind-altering drugs is hilarious and horrifying –in possibly his finest ever performance.

DiCaprio is the raw energy source that helps power the rest of the film. Scorsese matches him blow-by-blow with this dynamic expose of white-collar corruption. Using Belfort as a narrator – which serves to further expose his shallowness, greed and utter inability to learn any sustained messages from the depths he plummets to – the entire film is all about how the flip side of the American Dream tacitly promotes and encourages this sort of behaviour.

Belfort is the rash the system has come out as. In a highly effective early cameo, McConaughey plays Belfort’s first mentor, a coke-fuelled hedonist hooked on the buzz of closing deals, who pushes Belfort towards a career of success (including introducing a brilliant breathing exercise – improvised by McConaughey based on his own warm-up exercises – that becomes a mantra in the film). DiCaprio’s eyes have already lit up at watching a deal closing. Drugs and sex are just an attempt for Belfort to replicate the buzz of the real addiction: money.

Scorsese recognises that we don’t need to know the details of Belfort’s illegal dealings. (In his voiceover Belfort literally tells us it doesn’t matter, all that does is the shitload of cash they were bringing in.) We learn enough about the huge mark-ups (50% of the deal’s value) he can make from selling penny stocks (trades of small public companies) and “pump and dump” tactics to know it’s wrong. I will admit the film does little to show the victims – but then Belfort never cares either, proudly stating at one point he has no guilt fleecing his clients out of cash, because he knows how to spend it, better than they do.

It all pours into a hedonistic, alpha-male environment where the air is as littered with fucks (the film held a record for most use of the word) as the floors and desks of Belfort’s offices are during his hooker-filled end-of-week parties. Wolf of Wall Street is also an expose of toxic alpha-maledom. Bullying, abuse and screaming are ripe, women are basically commodities traded as easily as shares. The only exceptions are those allowed into the boys’ club as either surrogate-male fellow traders or trophies to adorn the arm. Margot Robbie (superb in a star-making role) plays Belfort’s glamourous wife, who knows she needs to use her physical assets to make her way in this world.

The film rips along through a party-deal-party structure. Belfort goes from wowing his fellow penny stock traders by making $2k in two minutes to wrapping the trading floor of his fake-old-school Wall Street firm around his finger in excess filled speeches. He also goes from a charming party animal to an incoherent, rambling, deeply unpleasant and dangerous drunk and drug addict. But crucially, he learns nothing . There is no life-and-soul shattering payback like Henry Hill undergoes. Fault, guilt and consequences roll off his rich, spoilt back. He ends the film still winning the adulation of would-be millionaires, his conscience (if it exists) untroubled by any impact his actions have had on others.

Perhaps Scorsese could have allowed more space to victims – and to Kyle Chandler’s dutiful and dedicated FBI agent who brings him down (our final shot of this character stresses his humble, low-paid status – echoing back to his confession to at times regretting leaving a trading career for a law one). But that’s to criticise the film for not being obvious enough. Of course parties are fun. But each party becomes wilder, more orgiastic and uncomfortable as the film goes on. But if we didn’t understand the fun, we couldn’t understand how people get hooked on this adrenalin fuelled life.

Wolf of Wall Street though is a warning to the curious – if you are smart enough to look. Belfort’s soulless, horrible life is not one to aspire to, and his moral emptiness not one to wish to have. It’s a funny film, but it’s also a dark one. DiCaprio is brilliant beyond belief, Jonah Hill funny and pathetic as his best friend, Margot Robbie becomes a star and Scorsese rips through the film with the energy, passion and dynamism of a much younger director. An outstanding tentpole film in his CV.

Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo delight in the light, frothy, charming Best Picture winner The Artist

Director: Michel Hazanavicius

Cast: Jean Dujardin (George Valentin), Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller), John Goodman (Al Zimmer), James Cromwell (Clifton), Missi Pyle (Constance), Penelope Ann Miller (Doris Valentin), Malcolm McDowell (Butler)

In 1920s Hollywood George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is King of the Silver Screen. Why would he want anything to change? Surely these ‘Talkies’ are just a passing fad, right? Ooops. Before he knows what has happened, Valentin has gone from top of the world to the very bottom, left behind (like so many real-life silent stars) by change. Meanwhile, Peppy Miller (Bérénice Bejo), the young extra from his glory days whom Valentin briefly mentored, become a star of the Talkies. But Peppy still loves Valentin – and maybe he loves her – even while Hollywood pulls them apart.

Plot-wise, The Artist is pretty conventional. What really makes it stand out is that it’s a silent film about silent film. Perhaps that’s why the whole world went gaga for it (gifting it five Oscars, including wins for Hazanavicius, Dujardin and the Big One) – it was a genuine burst of nostalgia-tinged novelty. Everything old is eventually new again: I remember the novelty myself – sitting in a cinema and suddenly, after the music stops, hearing nothing but silence. Match that with the undeniable charm and energy the story is told with and, boom, you had a hit.

Does The Artist survive repeated viewings? Just about – though it looks increasingly like a slight film, that raises warm feelings but makes little lasting impact (I was surprised how much of it I had forgotten). Hazanvicius’ study of silent cinema has clearly been thorough, and this is undeniably a wonderful love letter to Hollywood’s history. Every technical detail is carefully reproduced, and the pastiche Fairbanks-style adventure stories Valentin stars in is spot on. The actors fully embrace the slightly exaggerated mannerisms of silent acting, telegraphing emotions with urgency.

Hazanvicius uses sound, when it comes, brilliantly. The opening of the film is bathed in music as we watch the premiere of one of Valentin’s films – only for all the sound to drop out the second the film-within-a-film ends. (We even see a “Silence behind the screen” sign before it does). We only hear everyday sounds twice – once in a hilariously haunting dream of Valentin’s where objects make noise but he cannot – and at the end of the film as Valentin finally finds a place in Talking Hollywood. Other than that, it’s scores, speaking cards (some of them witty, like Valentin’s wife’s question “Why do you refuse to talk?”) and all the style of silent cinema.

It’s a sweet and gentle film. There is no trace of the ruthless business Hollywood is, and not a trace of the darkness that touched many of this era. There is never any prospect of Valentin turning into, say, Sunset Boulevard’s Norma Desmond or any of the other washed-up waxworks in her house of broken dreams. Valentin loses everything, but remains a generous and decent guy, firing the loyal chauffer he hasn’t paid in a year (and giving him his car for free!) because otherwise he’ll never leave him. And of course, his dog loves him, so he must be a great guy. (The dog by the way was the break-out star, this charming, brave canine even getting a campaign for best supporting actor).

The film centres a love story between Valentin and Peppy. The two of them have an instant connection – but Valentin is the star, with Peppy the ingenue. This bond can survive nearly everything, even while Valentin resents her success. Hazanavicius manages to make this very sweet, even though Peppy is sometimes tediously saintly in her devotion. Valentin may have mixed feelings about his protégé – but in a housefire, the only thing he saves is footage of the two of them messing around in outtakes from one of his old films.

The film seems unbothered as well by the fact that Valentin is married. The wife (a thankless role for Penelope Ann Miller) doesn’t get a name, let alone any sense of a personality other than (it seems) being some sort of shrew.

You could also see Peppy, if you wanted to be uncharitable, as a bit of a stalker. She buys up (by proxy) all of Valentin’s goods when he goes broke, practically abducts him from the hospital after he is caught in a fire, hires his staff. Tip your head to one side and you can see her boiling a few bunnies. The Artist though sees her as more of a “Guardian Angel” (as per the title of one of Peppy’s movies) – and you can argue that there is something old-fashioned (not always in a good way) about a film where the female lead defines her success only by how it can help the man she loves.

The tinge of creepy to the Valentin-Peppy relationship isn’t helped by using a huge chunk of the Bernard Herrmann Vertigo score to underscore the film’s conclusion, not to mention the left-field melodrama of Peppy racing across town to prevent Valentin from committing suicide (motivated it seems by realising Peppy is his Guardian Angel). It’s an odd mis-step – and the sequence not only feels radically different from the rest of the film, it also seems to heavy for such a light confection.

But, negatives aside, it’s a decent little film. Jean Dujardin is the epitome of charm and old-school Hollywood wit as Valentin – it’s a master-class in physicality and he oozes matinee idol cool, and a certain boyishness. Bejo is very good as the well-meaning, kindly Peppy. The film is a puff of air, and once you get over the novelty, you’ll be amazed how little there is to it. But it’s told with such energy, charm and nostalgic wit (and ends with a lovely dance routine) as well as affectionate nods to old-school Hollywood, you won’t mind too much, even if you’re surprised it won as many awards as it did.