The Wolf of Wall Street: “…a $40,000 dollar gold f—ing watch!”
As Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street holds the record for the most uses of the F-word in a mainstream non-documentary film (whose job is it to count this stuff, by the way?), it was always going to be almost impossible to quote it without having to blank something out. But disregard for decency is basically the name of the extremely debauched game in this movie; Scorsese and company maxed out the boundaries of acceptable human behaviour at every available chance– and clearly thoroughly enjoyed it.
Drug abuse, streams of commendably inventive bad language, mistreatment of women, mistreatment of animals, mistreatment of vehicles, the infamous dwarf-gate – The Wolf of Wall Street positively revels in its controversy, while morality is left weeping in a corner.
What with the dangers of excess and the constant threat of the law, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio)’s days of living this life were always going to be numbered. But whereas this is fairly predictable from the outset, there is a particular moment in which the reality of that fragility is made suddenly and absolutely clear.
During a characteristically enthusiastic motivational speech to his employees, in which he is roaring on about the importance of being rich, Jordan removes his $40,000 gold Rolex and flings it into the crowd. He intends the gesture to give the crowd the impression of disposable wealth, which of course it does – but for the audience something else is happening entirely. Scorsese arrests the shot of the watch moving through the air, slowing it right down and cancelling out all other sound to leave just an amplified metallic tick of its mechanism.
The startling contrast of these frames compared to the noisy cattle-market that is the rest of the film is a sharp and unmistakeable reminder that among all the decadence, glamour and dwarf-throwing, time has been moving steadily along for Jordan – and is about to run out. Then the shot is released, the watch drops into the clamouring hands below, and normal depravity resumes. It is, even within to Scorsese’s impressive catalogue of cinematic achievements – a moment of pure grab-and-shake-you-by-the-collar genius.