The pace and energy of The Wolf of Wall Street is heightened to match the time period, and it does the same with the (supposedly true) stories and antics of these brokers going absolutely bananas. With higher stakes comes even more outrageous and brazen debauchery, which the film does not shy away from. DiCaprio has frequently compared the story to Caligula; the movie itself describes its parties as bacchanalian.
What it reminded me of, though, were those teen party movies like Project X or Superbad, even Animal House—a frat atmosphere in the country’s financial epicenter. The brokers depicted here behave like boys left with no supervision and a blank check to bring in chimpanzees, abuse little people, fill the office with sex workers and cause millions of dollars in damages to hotels. Rob Reiner as “Mad Max” Belfort is the only voice of reason, of maturity, in the office, and usually he is being drowned out by animal noises or having his microphone forcibly removed from his hands.
Like most types of excess, even the parties of The Wolf of Wall Street begin to get repetitive and stale, to the point where they become pathetic, but it also becomes emblematic of how they do business, behaving like children, thinking short term, taking imbecilic risks. Aunt Emma says “Risk is what keeps us young,” but the causality of those two concepts seem reversed.
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