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Post by peanut80 on Jan 22, 2014 10:48:14 GMT -5
ArnzThanks for reply
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Post by Zotyto on Mar 25, 2014 14:13:31 GMT -5
The Wolf Of Wall Street follows the struggle of a repressed conscience, a theme Scorsese has connected with water in the past, most rigorously in both Cape Fear and Shutter Island. In each of those films, water holds the power to haunt, refracting a guilt-ridden protagonist's psyche into a karmic monster. In Raging Bull, water is symbolically associated with Jake LaMotta's second wife Vickie, a young blonde who's angelic allure and intangible power to heal is revealed as her husband's shallow objectification, obscuring her true nature as a living, breathing woman. In Jordan Belfort’s case, both uses of the water metaphor are married, haunting him by foiling his grandest plans and mocking his inability to have a lasting or realistic relationship with anyone of the opposite sex. This connection extends intrinsically and lives through performance in how comically disproportionate DiCaprio distends Jordan’s reaction to a glass of water when wielded as a weapon by his second wife Naomi, another unknowable and archetypically angelic blonde. Much in the same way Jordan handles the women in his life, he continually attempts to master water by throwing money at it (figuratively as well as literally) but only ends up sinking his yacht and by extension its namesake, his wife. And here the link is made inextricable. I wonder if you thought it accidental that when Jordan and the Swiss banker first meet, they are identically framed from mirrored angles with the banker's back to an office aquarium and Jordan's back to the ocean? Did you figure the fixed aquatic framing of Jordan eyeing the banker's exotic fish adoringly for random b-roll? What about his shit-eating admiration for Donnie’s swallowing of the gold fish? What about his exasperation at his colleagues for their lack of familiarity with Moby Dick? What about his crystalline point of view of the cannonball pool splash that drapes Naomi like some kind of mermaid when first they meet or the distance his flat, wakeless pool intimates when he reveals his ankle bracelet to Donnie as his wife paces, dry-docked in the background? Is it by coincidence that the Swiss banker ends up with an interchangeable, objectified blonde who is shown giving herself over to him, not only freely but in bed, the very same setting in which we first met Jordan’s wife and last saw her submit to being taken against her will? Does it even need to be mentioned that Naomi's bedroom introduction occurs in a God’s eye view, a shot Scorsese practically has a patent on and is almost always associated with retribution? I just noticed that there's a large painting of a sailboat on the ocean in Jordan's office. Foreshadowing, or proving Dino's point that Scorsese has a thing with water?
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