For my Formal Film study I studied movies that had to do with the lifestyle of working on wall street. I watched The Wolf of Wall street and that is what sparked my interest on this topic. The depiction of Jordan Belford's drug and sex crazed life intrigued me and i was curious as to whether this was a common occurrence that comes with the stock market and wall street life style. The films I watched were, again, The wolf of Wall(2013) street directed by Martin Scorsese, Wall street(1987) directed by Oliver Stone, and American Psycho(2000) directed by Marry Harron.
Wile all 3 films were different and had different plots from one another they were all very similar when touching on the life style of a stock broker on wall street. A little background knowledge on these films; The wolf of Wall street shows the life of Jordan Belford, a young thriving stock broker who starts his own firm on wall street that takes the market by storm and makes a name for himself and also shows his crazy and chaotic life that is filled with drugs and prostitutes and money. Wallstreet was a film that was about a young up and coming stock broker who desperately wants to move his way up the latter on wallstreet and make a name for himself and he feels the only way to do that is to impress his hero and legendary wall street player Gordon Gekko. American Psycho is quiet different from all 3, this film is a bout a young man on the sock market in wall street who also leads a double life as wealthy wall street banker by day and a crazed blood thirsty serial killer at night. All films were different yes, but when touching on the life style of wall street they were all very similar. In all 3 movies they show up and coming stock brokers and how they spend there time especially when trying to impress the top dogs. They all spend there time swearing, yelling, trying to make as much money as possible and being the best, having outrageous amounts of sex, and drugs: more specifically cocaine. All 3 movies had the main characters take part in all this. They were all dressed similar, the typical look was: a very expensive costom suit, usually a french collar shirt, nice tie, gelled back hair, and suspenders. This is the typical look for those in the movies. The interesting part was all films are based of different eras in time and yet they are all so similar. I guess things just never change.
All in all after watching all of these films it was an eye opener to see just exactly what it is like in the hectic life that is wall street. Its not just all numbers and money and people in pit sweating profusely throwing paper and yelling at people to buy and sell in there stock. No, it much more than that, behind the vail lies a much larger life style filled with sex, booze, drugs, illegal transactions, swiss bank accounts, and jail time. All were very good movies and it was very interesting to see how they all compare, im sure those on wall street would disagree and say that these are all fabricated and that its not all like this, but id like to believe otherwise and have some hope that out there right now some guys is living a crazed life style like that of a king.
Hi Blake--after about a month of time to work on this, I'd expected more than three paragraphs. You seem to just scratch the surface of these films and how they portray the "evil stock broker" character. More work to examine technique and style would help a lot. How do the directors use the camera to portray these characters? Another thing about these three films is that two of them are satires and one is a clear condemnation of the lifestyle. All of them portray this negatively, and do so with excess. You mention they portray "the life of a king," but I think you may have missed the irony--these men seem to have so much but are, in fact, empty. I was hoping for a lot more from you on this project.
ReplyDelete