The Wolf of Wall Street (a classic film for business majors)

 

I feel crazy that with all the notoriety of this film, I have just now watched it. While this movie has been infiltrated with the characteristics of Hollywood, it still tells a true story. The story follow Jordan Belfort who is a classic con-artist that starts a stock selling scheme. The start of the movie shows Jordan working on Wall Street after he is married and he starts out innocent and caring about providing for his wife. Not long after, he gets let go and is finds a job at a small stock brokerage firm. There he takes his training from Wall Street and shows everyone at the firm how to sell stock for big money and take people's money to make them rich. While this film is made for storytelling and entertainment, it gives an overarching theme about ethical decision making.

    The acting in this movie is incredible and really helps portray the obnoxious and offensive character of Jordan Belfort. His hubris gets the best of him but throughout the movie he feels he is untouchable in regards to everything in his life. He leaves his wife for someone hotter and younger and he steals money from people without a care for their own situations. He doesn't care that the Feds are onto him, he could've stepped out, but he believed he could continue on this path with no repercussions.

    The cinematography in this scene is interesting, but it's not something I generally noted with the movie. The one scene I noticed it in was the boat scene where the Feds came to talk to Jordan. There were a lot of wide shots used to show the conflict and the confrontation between both parties. I think this helped show the lack of authority they had over Jordan and his lack of respect for them. He had his feelings of invincibility and at the end of the scene, the camera zooms in on him making it rain money. I think it was important that the camera angles captured his actions and his face because it told the story of his hubris the whole time.

    Overall, I thought this movie was good in the storytelling aspect, I just didn't think it delved deep into cinematography and I couldn't determine any cultural relevance. There have been other stories made off of famous fraud cases such as Catch Me If You Can and I think this falls in line with a similar theme and purpose for the film.