the wolf of wall street (d. scorsese, w. terrence winter)

Lets call a spade a spade and a turkey a turkey. Despite generally positive reviews, rest assured that the Wolf of Wall Street is in reality a wolf with no clothes. Befuddled critics have been flummoxed by the Scorsese brand, which is there to full effect. Goodfellas voiceover, Casino narrative switchbacks, Mean Streets soundtrack etc etc. It’s like watching a Scorsese tribute band. The only trouble is that the tribute band has the original on bass, lead guitar and vocals. And goes on for so long you’ve almost forgotten what day it is when you come out. It’s one thing sitting through three hours of this if you’re getting paid for it and another if you’re the one forking out.

As such, before we even touch the subject matter, it’s an increasingly depressing experience. Increasingly, because the film opens with a certain amount of whiplash chutzpah. McConaughey’s cameo is the best bit of (over-) acting in the film. (The whole film is garishly over-acted, which is in keeping with a film which is garish and over-everything.) However, after about 45 minutes it becomes clear that the narrative and the edit have run away with the leash and they’re not going to be coming back in a hurry. Thereafter, as DiCaprio nerds his way around town, seeing the old master stumble through his paces becomes more and more dispiriting. Like watching an old boxer step back into the ring once too often.

Like many films which purport to be decadent and laden with vice, WOWS is a deeply nerdish enterprise. All the characters are borderline sociopaths, people who have the emotional intelligence of a peanut. DiCaprio, Marty et al might argue that that’s the point, that this is a savage indictment of US greed, but when the filmmakers themselves, from top down, are gorging themselves with such obvious delight, it’s hard to take this line in any way seriously. Boiler Room, a low-budget film, addressed the same material with much more punch. The slightly theatrical Margin Call got much closer to the nub of the matter. There’s nothing creative or revelatory about DiCaprio’s fall from grace as a low-rent Bernie Madoff. Indeed, far from critiquing its protagonist and his world, it’s evident that the film relishes and celebrates it.

You have to put this in some kind of context. In what other country or industry would a 71 year old man be put in charge of a budget of $100,000,000 (estimated, IMDB) and allowed to make a film laden with busty young women and drug-taking. If this is Scorsese’s Nero moment, it just goes to show how tedious the fantasies of a geriatric are. That he lives in a society which allows him to indulge these fantasies isn’t his fault. That he allows himself to tarnish his body of work is. Then again, when the dust has settled, no-one’s going to be going back to the Wolf to find out what was special about Marty. 

matar a todos (d. esteban shroeder, w. vierci, marino, henriquez)

In 1995 a Chilean man's body was found dead on a beach near Montevideo. His name was Berrios, and he had been a chemist working for the Pinochet regime in the development of lethal poisons. In 1993 he had fled Chile for Uruguay, where he had been, so the film indicates, under the 'protection' of the Uruguayan military police as the complex US run Operation Condor unravelled. This is the context of Shroeder's movie, which follows the investigations of Julia Gudari, an attorney, as she attempts to understand what happened when Berrios appeared briefly at a police station in 1993 before disappearing completely from view.

It's difficult to know exactly what to make of the movie, which never quite lives up to the fascinating premise. The film follows Julia as she moves from Montevideo to Buenos Aires to Santiago in pursuit of the truth, in the face of familial and professional opposition. However, it has to contend with the fact that in the end, Julia achieves little in spite of her gruelling efforts.

The fact that the film has three scriptwriters perhaps indicates a movie that isn't exactly sure of its focus. The director intercuts several aesthetically pleasing shots of Julia as she swims in a pool to relieve the tension she's enduring, but this nod towards a detailed psychological portrait of a woman confronting the still beating corpse of Latin American dictatorships is not carried much further. It almost feels as though, just by dealing with this contentious topic, the director feels he's doing his job, and assumes the significance of the story will lend a weight to the film which it never achieves.

The slight lack of focus is a pity, as the material is rich and the story feels like one that needs to be told. From my perspective it felt as though there was more drama inherent within Julia's story than the story revealed. However, within the context of a Latin America still getting to the grips with events of the not-so-recent past, it may be that the film is more telling. I watched it in Punta Carretas shopping, an affluent corner of Montevideo. The audience seemed engrossed and attentive. All save for one man who sat behind me, and shuffled restlessly the whole way through, as though he was itching to escape but didn't feel he could. In its quiet portrait of the ties between state and family, and the way in which the values of la patria possess the capacity to mess with the delicate equilibrium of the family unit, Matar A Todos puts a finger on an issue which remains a faultline within Uruguayan society.