'The Wolf of Wall Street' is fantastical glorification of facts (and that's okay)

I watched The Wolf of Wall Street again today after writing about The Social Network yesterday got me thinking; does a biographical film need to stick to the facts, or even the spirit, of the original framework to make a compelling film?

Now I like/love films like Spotlight, All the President's Men, Z and Chariots of Fire which tell real-life stories and events in a manner that's very truthful to the original circumstances, even if there are variations here and there. I like films which utilize real-life stories to craft out stories that take the spirit of the facts and mould it into the director's vision, like my second favourite film of all-time, The Elephant Man. I suppose I might not covered what I'm trying to say very clearly, so I'll put it in brief here: I like when biopics strive for realism, but I don't mind when they diverge from the truth so long as it's permitted by the people it's portraying and it works for the film.

Now here's the thing about biopics like The Social Network and The Wolf of Wall Street; from what I've read, they stick to the facts fairly accurately in terms of who, where, what happened. But when it comes down to the characters themselves, there seems to be some manner of debate as to what's factual and what's fictional. In The Social Network, Jesse Eisenberg's Mark Zuckerberg is a class-A douchebag who has glimmers of humanity; people have complained that that's far removed from who he is in real-life, and that the character of Eduardo Saverin, played by Andrew Garfield, was falsified into a more positive light.

Now, I can't comment at all on that front, but it's been a common sort of discussion throughout film history, from Gandhi to Jim Garrison to Lincoln, and today I'll be talking about Jordan Belfort. How real-life figures are portrayed, in what sort of light positive or negative, and how the film utilizes them to tell their personal stories, is what's often subject to debate even more so than the actual facts of the story themselves.

Well this brings me to The Wolf of Wall Street, a film I expected to mildly like and thoroughly disapprove of before watching it the first time, which all pretty much disappated through the opening scene where after being thoroughly impressed with his heartbreaking, moving turn in Dallas Buyer's Club I was treated to Matthew McConaughey weirding the hell out of Leonardo DiCaprio's Jordan Belfort.

Having read up a bit on Jordan Belfort's life story and attempted to flick through a few pages of his biography, I didn't find anything about him particularly compelling or praiseworthy. I didn't, and still don't really understand what he did in the offices of Stratton Oakmont, and how detrimental it was to other peoples' lives, though by all accounts it was pretty bad. In short, I had very little interest in the man's life story, another story of excess that I was going to watch the film adaptation of purely because it was a Martin Scorsese film.

Well, the brilliance of The Wolf of Wall Street as a film is that it plays both sides of the fact/fiction card perfectly. It works as a retelling of Jordan Belfort's life story, as many passages and segments in the film are apparently lifted straight from the biography - whether they're true or not is besides the point, in this context. It also works as just a thoroughly entertaining film that's endlessly re-watchable, a fictional glorification of a very real life of excess. What I mean by that is Scorsese, I feel, is never really trying to tell a 'real-life' story of Jordan Belfort in the way that, say, Richard Attenborough tried to pay homage to the life of Gandhi. In fact, I'd say he's kind of subverting that sort of biographical approach by using the way he told Goodfellas to tell The Wolf of Wall Street, as a sort of extended fantasy, twisted wish-fulfilment of decadence that glamourises the lifestyle while never advocating it. Some might call it sitting on the fence, I call it brilliance. Another element to the film I used to underrate but now I kind of love is the supporting cast of characters. McConaughey is great, but so is pretty much everyone else, and Jonah Hill in particular I think best exemplifies the tone the film is going for; you enjoy and laugh at everything his character does because it's hilarious, and you want to see more, and it's technically glorified because of the exquisitely stylized way it's done, but glorification doesn't mean advocating, and you certainly wouldn't want to actually be in a room with him.

Crucial to the success of the film is of course, DiCaprio as Belfort. The most incredible thing about this piece of work is that through and through, Belfort is depicted in a negative light, any positive moments are very swiftly upended by a dark gag about Belfort's excessive lifestyle. He's never meant to be a hero, never meant to be looked up to, and he even admits at one point to an FBI agent that he does see himself as a sort of villain - 'Sail on a boat fit for a Bond villain, sometimes you've got to play the part'.

The genius behind this sort of writing and performance is that through and through, Jordan Belfort knows he's an immoral man. The excesses are not exactly portrayed as immoral by the film itself, but they're certainly excesses, and to add to that he has a violent side, a childish temper, and is all around just porterayed in a rather shallow fashion. And yet he still wallows in the glory that he can do all that and still convince everyone he's a hero. And he succeeds - it's quite scary actually how interesting DiCaprio makes such a shallow protagonist to follow. The above two scenes are merely my two favourite scenes of the film, and they both hinge entirely on DiCaprio's artificial yet completely invigorating performance (with some fine support, particularly Kyle Chandler who I've always felt is a bit underrated in discussions of the film). DiCaprio's greatest performance is this performance because he utilizes all his superstar charm and allure to play this technically reprehensible character, and makes every one of his 'motivational' speeches feel truly motivational even though the film makes it clear it's another stop on the downwards trajectory, and every comedic moment where he's sprawled around babbling incoherently on Quaalude hilarious even though the background to it all is rather dark.

DiCaprio and Scorsese do an incredible thing with The Wolf of Wall Street for me personally, which is that they somehow make a source material and story that I found no interest at all in, so compelling by not necessarily deviating from the facts, nor totally subverting or decrying it, but finding that perfect middle ground. The Wolf of Wall Street is in a sense, a fantastical glorification of Jordan Belfort's life. Belfort's arrest is handled rather swiftly, and his release comes rather soon afterwards, the film ending with him out of prison and making another motivational pitch to a new bunch of followers. It paints his various excesses, and luxurious lifestyle in broad, entertaining colours that makes it all rather compelling; and DiCaprio's amazing performance even compels you (me, in any case) to root for a man you really shouldn't be rooting for. Not necessarily because what you think what he's doing is right or justified, but because Leo makes every action his presentation of Jordan Belfort takes so fun to watch, and Scorcese packages it into such a fine finished product of world-class editing, cinemarography and an all-round engaging experience, so you just wants things to go on, and on, and on because it's so extremely fun to watch. Maybe that's why it ended up being three hours long even though it didn't really need to; as a straightforward telling of the facts, the substance would have probably allowed for a maximum two hour film, but with the stylized brilliance of DiCaprio and Scorses an extra hour or so of, so to speak, indulgence is perfectly warranted.