The Wolf of Wall Street, American Hustle, Fruitvale Station, 12 Years a Slave, Dallas Buyers Club, Captain Phillips, A Hijacking, Ernest & Celestine, The Unspeakable Act, Night Moves, Neighboring Sounds
One of the biggest cinematic stories of the year was the controversy surrounding Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street. The detractors of the film bemoaned the absence of clear-cut condemnation for the financial atrocities committed by billionaire Jordan Belfort. The film, a satirical, relentless take on the excesses of Belfort’s rise to Wall Street fortune, does not explicitly denounce his lifestyle; yet, it instills a feeling of discomfort in the audience by thrusting them into Jordan's never-ending cycle of moral, ethical and financial deviance. That the film remains mostly true to the real life story is rather more disturbing than what approach Scorsese takes to this story. That Belfort is roaming the streets free – having spent less than a mere two years in prison – is infinitely more unforgivable than Terrence Winter’s crime of removing didacticism from his screenplay. Nevertheless, the real world tension between institutional crime and punishment, or lack thereof, is at the heart of the debate. That any film would have ability to start such a conversation is worth applauding.
Thanks to the awards-centric mentality that shapes much of the cinematic dialogue near the end of the year, comparisons between The Wolf of Wall Street and David O. Russell’s American Hustle were nearly inescapable. Russell’s film takes inspiration from Scorsese crime (and punishment) classic, Goodfellas, but the ensemble acting and cinematic influences aren’t the only connecting elements between the two films. Though Russell and his team take artistic liberty with the ABSCAM scandal, theirs is effectively also a tale of criminals that enter the system, play with its rules from within, and exit unscathed. The crucial difference between the two films is that in the latter, the system doesn’t applaud or protect the criminals; it simply can’t overcome their shrewdness. The criminals may resume their lives in the end, but not before dragging the corrupt establishment down.
If the institution protects the wealthy criminals in The Wolf of Wall Street and dances to their tune in American Hustle, its role in Ryan Coogler’s Fruitvale Station is rather more alarming, for not only is it a policeman - a public service agent - who commits the crime here, but also that the harrowing true story of Oscar Grant’s murder is so recent and yet, already forgotten. When Michael B. Jordan utters the gut-wrenching “You shot me! I got a daughter” line, it isn’t just the emotional punch of seeing a young father vanish that brings us to tears, but the knowledge that even in the second decade of the 20th century, America’s treatment of the lower rungs of its society, and particularly Black and Hispanic communities, stands at such sharp contrast to the privileges of the rich. Fruitvale Station is a reminder that crimes such as Grant’s death are sadly a more common occurrence that we would like to believe and that the punishment rarely ever arrives.
Whereas Coogler tackles issues of race and a problematic judicial system in modern America, British filmmaker Steve McQueen looks further back at the history of racial inequality in 12 Years a Slave. To deem slavery a crime that went unpunished for far too long is to grossly understate one of the biggest institutionalized crimes against humanity. McQueen doesn’t compromise in showing us the everyday horrors that millions of men and women faced; he turns his unflinching gaze on the sight of a woman’s brutal flogging or a man left to struggle millimetres away from death on muddy grounds. The offenders never faced reprimand for the despicable abuse they inflicted on their victims, so punishment is unavoidably absent from McQueen’s film. But on the grander scheme of things, the film is a brutally frank lesson in the dark history that has woven racism into the fabric of American culture.
