Saturday, January 07, 2017
Occupy Wall street and viva la WallStrexit
MARTIN SCORSESE –
LEONARDO DICAPRIO – THE WOLF OF WALL STREET – 2013
What I said before remains true. That film is
too long and the strong arguments are like drowned in detail. But it sure was popular.
DiCaprio is on the bandwagon of Martin Scorsese in his trip and crusade against
extreme capitalism, here the extreme financial capitalism that cost the whole
world a phenomenal financial crisis in 2008-2009, and we are still not out of
it, we are not yet out of it.
The meaning is simple: there is no friend in
business, in business we have no friends, and you can be sure your best friend
is ready to rat on you if you are ready to rat on him or her. And strangely
enough there are always some circumstances that will justify your ratting on
your friends and there will no salvation whatsoever on that road.
Life may be fun if there is a lot of money, a
lot of fun, many women, a lot of drugs and all that goes along with that but
one day all that will collapse, your wife or life partner, you children, your
brain and your mind, your friends, your money and even your family. You will
end up in prison and you will wane more and more alone in this here everyday
life that is so humdrum when you take off your golden coat, waistcoat and
shirt. When the gold is gone all you have left is your tears and they are
running like hell in paradise. So you will start again somewhere in the desert
to train rattlesnakes to woo their preys.
It is a little bit sad this film is so long.
90 minutes would be enough to show the whole picture and the architecture of
this successful failure. And yet there are some nice scenes, even when they are
gross. Remember there will always be a fink in your band of gangsters. Better
retire in some monastery in Thailand or Myanmar than live that absurd life of
hypocrisy, privilege and treason. What is worse: to be alone or to be betrayed?
Just for fun I include below my old review of
January 26, 2014, two years ago already.
« A surprising film indeed. What is it about?
« First of all it is about 45 minutes too
long. The sex scenes and the orgies could have been cut short to a simple
ellipse instead of a graphic depiction. That is one easy shortening that should
have been used. Same thing with the drug scenes that are by far too numerous
and too long. We got the message very fast that to succeed in Wall Street you
have to be a sex addict, a drug-cocktail addict, an alcohol addict, a money
addict, a money-lifting addict, a thief, a liar and a few other little things
like that. We know that, we knew that and we have known it since at least
American Psycho.
« So, what is the original message?
« It is simple. Anyone can succeed like that
wolf in the USA in the most ruthless way possible with the most illegal and
unethical means possible because the system is a filter-less abyss. There is no
real filter to prevent these crimes and other offenses. There is no protection
of any kind to prevent criminal minds to get into the business. The American
system after 1987, date of the beginning of the wolf's career, is absolutely
deregulated and it will be so till a very recent period, till a couple of years
after the 2009 crisis. What's more most of those who are supposed to look after
the various crimes committed in the financial field can be bought for a
pittance, at times a little bit more, be they American, or Swiss, or whatever
affiliation they have as for financial paradise.
« Yet the FBI cannot be bought up. They are
incorruptible, which I doubt very much. But well we can always think there is
an Eliot Ness in every FBI special agent.
« The worst part is that these people when
they are caught will become, in their own interest, the most talkative monsters
you can imagine. They will accept a deal at once. The principle is simple:
"In Wall Street there is NO friend!" Partners, associates,
colleagues, collaborators are ALL, all of them, nothing but competitors,
enemies. As long as they can work as a pack they will, but as soon as the pack
is under a real menace each one will go alone against the pack if necessary. A
starving pack in the Rocky Mountains may die though if it comes to that the
outcome will be ONE survivor and ONE survivor only. Wolves are cannibals in
situations where survival is at stake.
« As for a meaning that is very light and very
naïve. "Lupus est homo homini, non homo, non quom qualis sit novit"
(wolf is man to man, no man when he does not know who the other is). Erasmus
(15th-16th centuries) quoted it from Plautus (3rd-2nd centuries BCE), the
original author, and then Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century made it a central
concept of his vision of humanity in his work Leviathan. Nothing new under the
sun. This phrase "Man is wolf to man" has become a catch phrase with
the Industrial Revolution and Marxism. Though capitalism, and any form of it,
did not invent it. Gladiators were Romans. The Celts burnt their criminals. And
the modern times invented a lot of such cruel treatment of human beings as
slaves or as playthings for sadistic or didactic practices, even calling it the
death sentence. A woman was recently raped in public by more than fifteen men
in a village in eastern India on the order of the village elders because she
refused to break off with a man, her lover, who was from another village that
was sexually off limits for these elders. Maybe the saying does not apply to
women?
« When we thus look at the film and wonder
what makes it in anyway different, original, new, we have to say it is a
brilliant cinematographic illustration of a common place idea and situation.
The catch phrase of the film is that New Zealand has become the haven,
paradise, refuge and shelter of all those criminals, financial, copyright or
data all together and the same, where they can go on striving without any
menace from the FBI. Australia is a second haven of the type and then Russia
too is trying to set her feet in that juicy field. The juice is not only money,
it is also a lot of blood.
« That last remark, the catch phrase, the
final scene of the film is the most powerful argument for a shorter film, a
film that could have been a lot shorter. "Sell me that pen" becomes
very shallow and trite after three hours of ranting, raving, partying, raping,
raging, and so many other off-normalcy attitudes, actions and principles. The
film is in itself an orgy of ever and endlessly repeating sequences: we are
framed in a million images of exactly the same value and tinge and color and
hue. What a shame! Scorsese could do better. »
# posted by Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU @ 1:42 PM 
