‘TIS the season of office parties, but there won’t be many this Christmas which are as elaborately debauched as those in “The Wolf of Wall Street”. In Martin Scorsese’s riotous new biopic, no dress-down Friday is complete without black-tied waiters serving champagne, crowds of prostitutes, near-naked marching bands, games of dwarf-tossing and white powder by the barrel-load.
“现在正值办公室派对的季节，但是今年圣诞节并不会见到多少电影《华尔街之狼》中那种纸醉金迷的派对。”在马丁·斯科塞斯浮华喧嚣的新传记片中，如果没有出现端着香槟的黑领结服务生、成群结队的妓女、近乎裸体的军乐队、扔侏儒的游戏和成桶的白粉，便装星期五就不算完整。
The master of the revels is the film’s protagonist and unrepentant narrator, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), upon whose self-aggrandising memoir the film is based. In his early 20s he joins a major stockbroking firm, but his coked-up mentor (Matthew McConaughey) has barely finished his introductory pep-talk—“Move your money from your client’s pocket into your pocket”—before Black Monday comes around and Belfort is laid off. When he can’t find another job on Wall Street, he resorts to selling penny stock from a boiler room in Long Island. He develops such a taste for aggressive and disingenuous cold-calling that he sets up his own company, Stratton Oakmont. His staff consists of a crack-smoking furniture salesman (Jonah Hill) and the various drop-outs he knows from school. Everyone is willing to follow the scripts he gives them, and they are just as willing to ignore his various illegal practices. Soon Stratton Oakmont is raking in millions—as well as attracting the attention of a doggedly disapproving FBI agent (Kyle Chandler).
这场狂欢派对的主人公就是电影的主角、毫不悔改的旁白者乔丹·贝尔福特（莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥饰演），这部电影正是改编于他自吹自擂的回忆录。他在20岁出头加入股票经纪公司，不过他沉迷毒品的导师（马修·麦康纳饰演）刚做完入职宣传——“这行就是把钱从客户的口袋里放进你自己的口袋”，黑色星期一就从天而降，贝尔福特遭到解雇。他在华尔街找不到其他工作，只好在长岛的锅炉房里卖低价股票。他学会了主动出击，假模假式地拨打推销电话，成立了自己的斯特拉顿奥克芒公司。他的手下包括吸毒的家具推销员（乔纳·希尔饰演）和他在学校里认识的辍学生。每个人都情愿按照他提供的剧本演戏，对他的各种不法行为视而不见。不久，斯特拉顿奥克芒公司就赚取了百万美元的收入——也引来了固执的联邦调查局探员（凯尔·钱德勒饰演）的注意。
Mr Scorsese is less disapproving. Having last made a children’s film, “Hugo”, perhaps he was in the mood for some swaggering, testosterone-drenched, adult-oriented entertainment. Whatever the reason, “The Wolf of Wall Street” is his most exuberant and overtly comic film: a frequently hilarious, manically energetic cavalcade of drug cocktails, naked blondes, helicopter crash-landings, and obscene spending sprees. It isn’t just studded with wild parties; the whole film is a wild party.
斯科塞斯本人并不反对贝尔福特的所作所为。在拍完儿童电影《雨果》后，也许他想要执导一部狂妄自负、充满男子气概的成人化娱乐片。无论如何，《华尔街之狼》都是他最活力四射、欢乐有趣的电影：频繁出现的滑稽镜头，疯狂刺激的毒品鸡尾酒、赤身裸体的金发女郎、轰鸣着陆的直升机，还有纵情声色的疯狂消费。这并不仅是一部充满狂欢派对的电影，这部电影本身就是疯狂派对。
Still, the rowdiest parties are also the most tiring. “The Wolf of Wall Street” is, essentially, a string of hair-raising anecdotes, and while all of them are funny, outrageous and masterfully told, very few of them advance the plot or deepen the characterisation, so they become exhausting. It takes about half an hour for the hard-working Dr Jekyll to mutate into a hedonistic Mr Hyde, and from then on the film just keeps charging from one orgy to the next until the inevitable day when the FBI agent makes his move. It’s a wisp of a narrative, given the three-hour running time—Mr Scorsese’s longest ever.
然而，最喧闹的派对也最让人厌倦。实际上，《华尔街之狼》表现了一连串惊心动魄的奇闻轶事，尽管这些情景风趣搞笑、荒唐离谱、叙事巧妙，却只有少数场景有助于推动情节的进展，挖掘角色的深度，因此让人变得疲惫不堪。这部电影只花了半个小时的时间，就把辛勤工作的杰奇博士变成纵情享乐的海德先生，然后就是接二连三的狂欢盛宴，直到联邦调查局探员采取行动，走向不可避免的结局。本片的叙事情节乏善可陈，片长却达到三个小时——这是斯科塞斯有史以来最长的电影。
Anyone who’s seen “Raging Bull” or “Goodfellas” will be waiting for the film to dig beneath the surface of the alpha-male anti-hero, and expose the self-loathing that makes him so reliant on drugs, prostitutes and designer suits. But the screenplay (by Terence Winter) is too carried away by the bacchanalian bad behaviour to concern itself with Belfort’s psyche. Instead, it presents him much as he’d present himself, and leaves the moralising to the viewer.
看过电影《愤怒的公牛》或《好家伙》的观众，都会期待这部电影深入挖掘反英雄表象下的内涵，暴露让主角沉迷于毒品、妓女和名牌西服的自我厌恶。但是泰伦斯·温特的剧本描写纵酒狂欢的笔墨过多，无心关注贝尔福特的心理状态。反之，这部电影用贝尔福特自己的方式呈现了他的形象，把道德说教留给了观众。
Why is “The Wolf of Wall Street” so soft on Belfort? Maybe it’s because Mr Scorsese, too, was a New Yorker from an unglamorous background who barged into the big time with motormouthed assurance before developing a severe cocaine addiction. When Belfort is shown handing out scripts to his employees, and pumping them up with inspirational speeches, he could be a film director himself: the uninhibited, live-wire Mr DiCaprio sometimes even looks and sounds like a younger Mr Scorsese. But whatever the similarities between Mr Scorsese and Belfort, the latter was still nothing more than a dissolute swindler—and that’s about all the film has to say on the matter. Still, it is possible to enjoy the rip-roaring party Mr Scorsese has thrown him without feeling that he is interesting enough to deserve it.
为什么《华尔街之狼》对贝尔福特如此纵容？或许是因为斯科塞斯也是出身平凡的纽约人，凭借出众的口才成为大导演，沉迷于可卡因不能自拔。片中贝尔福特向员工分发脚本，用鼓舞人心的演说激励他们，他可能就象征着导演本人：放荡不羁、活力四射的迪卡普里奥，容貌和言辞都如同年轻的斯科塞斯。然而，无论斯科塞斯和贝尔福特有多么相像，贝尔福特依然是个放浪形骸的骗子——这就是电影要体现的主题。尽管如此，观众仍可以享受斯科塞斯全力打造的这场喧嚣派对，不会感到他足够有趣配得上这场盛宴。