Movie: Wall Street (Oliver Stone, 1987)
The phone rings, followed by a pulsating drum beat. Half asleep, Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) picks up to be greeted by "Money never sleeps, pal". Gordon Gekko (Micheal Douglas) is on the other end of the line hyping his protégé up with arrogantly confident wisecracks about how much money and sex he will provide him with, until the sunrise stops him in his tracks. Awestruck he exclaims "I've never seen a painting that captures the beauty of the ocean in a moment like this". He says it with an affected emphasis aimed to seduce Bud, but that doesn't make his sense of wonder less genuine. The scene ends with a half-dressed, speechless, heavily breathing Bud, and the return of that fabulous drum motif, that appears in a number of scenes, and always for just a couple of seconds. Just enough to excite you for what's coming, and to want more of it.
The sunrise described by Gordon Gekko is decent. But Stone's filmmaking choices (and Douglas' acting choices) make you feel that the sunrise is indeed the greatest goddamn sunrise the world has ever seen. And when, in another scene, Charlie Sheen quotes Art of War back to Michael Douglas, you will almost forget that they have just been humiliatingly put in their place by a rich British aristocrat, played by Terence Stamp. By the time the camera glides past the sksyscrapers of the Upper East Side and Bud notes that "this is home" in a montage set to the Talking Heads nobody will even think of Stamp, or the (im)morality of Wall Street trading anymore. In no way is this a knock on the film, which I abslolutely loved. Stone wants to put you in the mindset of Bud Fox, and to a lesser extent, Gordon Gekko, to evoke how it feels to be in the position they are in, or rather, believe themselves to be. Gekko, and in his footsteps, Fox, are influential Wall Street businessman with a lot of money, power, connections and access. Though the film explores this, it is equally, if not more, interested in how this reality distorts their worldview and makes them experience life as if they are untouchable giants on top of the world. It's absolutely intoxicating and when Stone and Douglas tell they are surprised by real Wall Street traders telling them that Gordon Gekko is their hero, they should not be believed for a second. The film is designed to elicit exactly that reaction, at least until the moment Gekko wrecks Bluestar, and the film puts Martin Sheen's (I like that he plays Charlie's dad) perspective more to the foreground.
The famous "Greed is Good" line is one of those moments people like to cite when discussing how easily audiences miss the point of the film. Douglas' lines though come in the context of a longer speech in which he theatirically complains about the decline of America as an industrial nation, but is spot on (even when looking from a more leftist perspective!) about the issue at hand, namely that a corporation shouldn't have 30 vice-presidents who are nothing but symbolic paper pushing figureheads producing nothing, yet earning millions of dollars in salary. If greed is the opposite of that, as Gekko implies, it's at least not bad. Gekko also proceeds to note that greed in all its forms is good, not just greed for money, but also for life, knowledge, and love. And well, who can argue that greed for knowledge is bad? Of course, it's ridiculous for Gekko to put his greed in oppoistion to the greed of the vice-presidents, but there is a lot more going on the scene than just "look at this capitalist idiot, propagating that greed is good, when greed is, in fact, bad." This is even further complicated by the fact that Oliver Stone is just about the least modest mainstream filmmaker out there. The man will exploit every filmmaking resource he has at his disposal to make his movie, and more often than not, it's damn good.
Daryl Hannah is also good. She got a Razzie Award for her role, and though it's been well documented by now that the Razzie folks are nothing more than attention-seeking smug bastards, neither the cast and crew of Wall Street nor herself were very happy with her role and performance. It suprised me to find that out, because she is really the one character that embodies both the seductiveness of Wall Street life and its rottenness. She is essentially a high-class prostitute 'used' by Gordon Gekko to lure young folks like Bud into his inner circle. She can't escape this life, but also enjoys it. She gets to express herself as an interior designer, and genuinely falls in love with Bud. Yet she also knows that she only has as much freedom as Gekko allows her, all of which gets to the forefront in her final, fantasitcally written and performed, scene with Bud. She is the film's most complex character, and I don't think it would be nearly as great without her.
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