You may know Idris Elba, who plays Nelson Mandela in the new film Mandela: A Long Walk To Freedom, from his stint as Stringer Bell in The Wire.
Despite Elba doing essentially a nice job, Mandela is no The Wire. That may not seem like a fair comparison on the surface yet actually it speaks volumes. A subject as heroic and inspiring as Mandela’s begs for artistry of the highest order. What we get here is a nearly three-hour long replica of the worst aspects of a made-for TV movie. Dull around whatever edges it possesses, it’s hard to get away from the notion that Mandela, in the same month as his death at 95, deserves better.
Much of the problem lies in the enormity of such a long life in all its varied aspects. Some have suggested a mini series would have better served, or the narrowing of its focus on an aspect of Mandela’s life, much as the film Lincoln did last year. Going whole cloth on such a long and important life limits much of the proceedings to a stiff and sweeping rush job. When Mandela, during his 27 years of incarceration, is forbidden leave to bury his oldest son, it’s more told AT us than given enough emotional detail to resonate. Similarly, when Mandela is finally released from prison and reunited with his second wife, Winnie, their emotional disconnect barely begins to register when we’re whisked away to another chapter.
The film is bookended by Mandela’s personal struggle with the morality of and strategic efficacy of violence as a tool for social change. His transformation from bomb thrower to Gandhi-esque denier of vengeance once apartheid finally loses hold on South Africa is also sadly more of a sketch than a serious study. Despite a fine performance by Naomie Harris as Winnie, the film merely shows her progressively violent viewpoint after her own jailing rather than offering a look at the feelings that provoked her rage.
While I still recommend Mandela as a primer on this very important and highly inspiring subject, pursue this film only as an introduction. To get underneath the real Mandela, and to more deeply understand Winnie, including her far worse crimes than those depicted here, you’ll need to investigate further on your own. Panoramas like Mandela; A Long Walk To Freedom, while well-intentioned, are often as stodgy as their string-swelled soundtracks.
2.5 Humdrum If Well/Intentioned Odes To A Great Man (out of 5)
You will likely think Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street is either a marvelous spoof on avaricious assholes complete with its own brand of sex-and-drugs magical realism, or you’ll find it an excessive glorification of the very depravity it is lampooning. The likelihood that its leg-pulling challenge, its unnerving dare, will polarize its audience is itself refreshing. See this film and it’s further likely, you’ll either love it of hate it. What’s sure is you’ll get an outrageous take, send-up or not, on greed and it’s love child, hedonism.
Securities fraud and money laundering bring on tons of cash which gives rise to drug abuse, frequent prostitutes, even dwarf flinging. Based on Jordan Belfort’s memoir, the film goes over the top to equate the scale of his subsequent desensitized debauchery with the enormity of the sudden wealth obtained from Belfort’s “pump-and-dump” scamming of innocent clients to buy risky stocks. The temporarily enormously inflated stocks were then sold off from “rat hole” accounts controlled by Belfort and his sidekicks, who would be legally required to hold on to them for a designated time if they kept then in their own names. The investors were left with worthless paper.
Belfort made $23million in two hours after one particular deal, $49 million the year he was 26 years old, and ended up with a worth estimated at $200million. Lots of cash was smuggled into Switzerland. Unlike the excellent 2000 film Boiler Room, which also was based on Belfort’s firm, Stratton Oakmont, The Wolf of Wall Street captures the con of Belfort’s incredibly salesmanship, and then zeroes in on its grotesque aftermath.
Belfort was eventually fined $110 million, and sentenced to four years in prison, of which he served 22 months. Once out of jail, 50 percent of Belfort’s gross income as a motivational speaker, often at $30,000 a clip, goes towards the fine. He’s paid $10million so far.
As far as the incessant drug-taking, there are shades of DiPalma’s Scarface here, except, unlike DiPalma, Scorsese goes off the rails into caricature, then like a bumping car hitting the barrier, comes back to an equilibrium, albeit one that remains at all times uncomfortable for the viewer. You’re not about to get the viewpoint of the poor schmuck victims who DiCaprio and company literally give the finger to while on the phone closing their swindling. No, this film is all about the perpetrators. Sandwiched in its three hours of office orgies, fights and mock-fights of its lead players, and $2 million Vegas weekend (counting the “reconstruction costs”) are human interest scenes that are not only highly believable but entertaining in a more conventional Scorsesean sense. Belfort’s scene with his FBI agent pursuer (a very good Kyle Chandler) aboard his nearly 200-foot long yacht is one for the ages as DiCaprio peels off hundred dollar bills (and lobsters!) and tossing them toward the departing FBI agents off the yacht’s balcony. An earlier scene with a riveting Matthew McConaughey as Belfort’s authoritatively wild mentor at his first Wall Street job zings with a table-setting energy and freakishness that forewarns these are not conventional dudes whose world we are about to enter. They’re a special breed, and like McConaughey, they are all about the narcissistic thrill of putting their own rapaciousness above any iota of concern for their clients.
Later scenes with Belfort and his second wife (Margot Robbie) get as close as we will come to any demonstration of a human toll for all the greed and trickery. Yet this movie is about Belfort and, to a lesser extent his right-hand man, Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill). If you think Belfort is getting off scott-free, check out the scene where he is so out of it on quaaludes. DiCaprio needs to channel Buster Keaton and Jerry Lewis when he finds himself at a country club but literally unable to talk or walk. It’s beside the point but interesting nonetheless, that Scorsese has admitted to having his own personal drug abuse demons during the ’70s.
So fault Scorsese, if you must, for going straight to the hundredth floor of overkill parody, staying there for three hours, and finally going out on the balcony waving his fist. If you’re starting to feel a little guilty for enjoying the considerable laughs included in the outrage here, fault him all the more for perhaps attempting to implicate you, the viewer, as part of the problem. Just remember, for all of Stratton Oakmont’s excesses, the number of people hurt were a pittance compared to the damage done a decade or so later once the humongous investment banks, encouraged by deregulation, led us into a debilitating global economic crisis with much the same mind-set of me, me, me. They may not have been snorting coke off of hooker’s bare asses but they exploited an entire country in much the same manner Belfort and his group of clowns ripped off their victims. The particularly obscene outrage typified by Goldman Sachs’ Abacus deal requires an outrageous film, and we get one here in spades.
4.0 Salacious, Sullied Salesmen From Hell (out of 5)
Take a couple who deep down are essentially two deceitful people (Christian Bale and Amy Adams) who have made themselves successful at scamming the vulnerable. Add a hyper-pushy FBI agent (Bradley Cooper), who offers them a stay-out-of-jail deal dependent on their trusting each other. Mix in a big-time hood (Robert DeNiro) and a loose-cannon bimbo (Jennifer Lawrence) who both will affect this plot’s outcome in ways in which they are highly aware (DeNiro) and comically unaware (Lawrence). Now take the best director on the planet at blending comedic and dramatic elements (David O. Russell). Give him a real-life 1970s scandal (Abscam), itself stranger than fiction, and have him stir up a stylish, loose take on the scandal as a gateway to an outlandish romp concerned with human ambition, loyalty, and the art of the con. The result? Unrelenting, exhilarating fun and the year’s best time at the movies.
One of the most memorable ensemble casts in recent history seem to be getting such a kick out of out-acting one another it would almost be distracting if Russell himself wasn’t so distinctly front-and-center. Rollicking edits, crazy pans, slo-mo, brilliant song segues– and that’s just the techniques. The real gun in his pocket is in the makeup and costume designs. When is the last time hair so dominated a film? From Bale’s unusual combover to Jeremy Renner’s Jerry Lee Lewis pompadour to Cooper’s hair-curlers-produced ‘doo, there’s hair everywhere. And we haven’t even gotten to the women yet. Lawrence’s beehive makes most beehives you’ve seen before look like crewcuts. Her personality matches her hair perfectly in one of the year’s very best performances. (Let’s hope the idiot reporter who asked her if it was all downhill from here after she won her Oscar last year is watching). As Irving Rosenfeld’s (Bale’s) wife, Rosayln, she’s aware her of husband’s longstanding affair with Sydney Prosser (Adams). At first, she keeps us guessing about just how pissed she is about the whole thing, while issuing Irving her very unique brand of emotional Chinese water torture. Her climactic scene with Adams gave me shudders and goosebumps simultaneously. Let’s just say it’ll catch you by surprise.
Moments earlier, when Robert DeNiro makes his entrance as a reclusive mob boss checking out the veracity of the fake Arab sheikh at the center of the FBI’s sting operation, the rest of the cast seems to take on a new tone, like jazz musicians putting down their instruments out of respect for a master soloist.
More than the sum of its parts (and what parts!), American Hustle both lets you in on its playful exaggerations of both the scandal and the 70s and, then, plays you as well. Not to be outdone by his conniving two leads, Russell manages to stay a step ahead of everybody. Like a good magician, he throws out wonderful diversions (Cooper trying to put the make on Sydney while she deftly keeps him at bay, all the while continually nearly popping out of her various plunging necklines) while the plot moves from one unexpected direction to another. Manipulation never felt so good.
Renner, as Carmine Polito, based on former Camden mayor Angelo Errichetti, adds a lot as a basically good guy who gets somewhat innocently lured in–apparently quite unlike the real Errechetti. Additionally, the real-life Sydney had nothing to do with any of the derring-do. Not to worry. Russell declares at the film’s outset that “some of this actually happened.” If Russell were to have depicted all the victims of Abscam as acting purely out of greed, the film would actually have missed its chance to counterbalance the FBI’s equally ambitious bent, as exemplified by Richie DiMaso (Cooper) character, or lost out on Irving’s surprising core conscience. Remove Sydney and you leave out the film’s fulcrum, its catalytic centerpiece. You’d also be left with a bunch of white guys made a whole lot less interesting once deprived of the sensational female energy in this film.
Some films are not only better once they shed any slavish devotion to the facts surrounding a true story, but they actually are more able to get to the heart of their subject once they embrace their poetic license. Russell’s project, in preferring to be true to his vision of the American Dream in all its harsh and resilient manifestations rather than offer a journalistic reading of history, actually paradoxically renders a better, experiential understanding of that history.
4.5 Cynical, euphoric, touching and hilarious rewrites of history (out of 5 stars)
