One, Martin. Scorsese addict
I'm Martin. Scorsese fanatic. I have watched every feature film of his, most of the documentaries, short films before his official debut, as well as many scattered TV works, MVs and so on.
As a quasi-middle-aged man with a dream of movies, only the fanaticism of this old man can make me temporarily forget the cruelty of reality, the lack of talent, and the weakness of will, and project my dream in the light and shadow he depicts, and in his story When the flawed protagonist confesses, comfort himself that he's not that bad.
I read the appendix of the film, his book, his anecdotes on the Internet, many awards, speeches, speeches, reviews. I like his favorite movies, like John. Ford, Federico. Fellini, Mike. Powell; likes his friend's movies, like Bryan. Dipama, Stephen. Spielberg, Francis. Coppola, and like Robert. All De Niro's films... Of course, the most important and most important are his 24 feature films, as well as the upcoming "Silence", and even the topics that he has expressed interest in, such as "The Irishman" and "Moby Dick" "Wait.
Oh, by the way, there are also the movies he acted in. He played Van Gogh in Kurosawa Ming's movie "Dream" in his later years; The show sponsor of the show's "Puzzle Game" by Redford.
Yes, I like "The Wolf of Wall Street" very much, of course I like "The Wolf of Wall Street", even if I go to the theater and give me three hours of shady and let me sleep a long time, I wake up to see Dou Da's words typing "Directed by MARTIN SCORSESE", I will also force a smile to say, this movie is not bad, I give him five stars.
I give The Wolf of Wall Street five stars. Maybe it's not a perfect textbook movie, yes, his length, pacing and editing are still slightly flawed, and there is still no great Selma. Schoonmaker's soul-stirring "Fate of the World", the poetry of "Wild Bull" and the cold tone of "King of Comedy" are repressed and crazy; yes, no matter if you are fat or thin, whether you wear boxing gloves or not, Leonardo. DiCaprio still can't do the excavation and persuasion of Robert De Niro's characters.
"The Wolf of Wall Street" doesn't make the top five Scorsese films, and probably won't make the top ten either. In addition to not being able to compare to "Buffalo", "King of Comedy", "Taxi Driver", "Good Guys", "The Last Temptation of Christ", it may not be as good as "Cruel Street", "The Age of Innocence", "The Last Temptation of Christ" After get off work", or "Hugo's Adventures", "Infernal Affairs".
Regardless, The Wolf of Wall Street remains one of the best movies to watch during the 2014 Oscars season. The entertainment I enjoyed at the cinema was no less than Gravity. Although the euphoria was swept up the next day by "The Ballad of the Drunken Country" - telling me how narrow the perspective of Hollywood supremacy is and how worthless the tastes of the Oscars are.
But in any case, Scorsese still delivered beautiful results. This eternal movie madman told us with three hours of indulgent carnival and nightmares that he always dedicated himself to the same pious heart. Movie.
"One day, I'll die behind the camera," he told reporters shortly after the release of "The Adventures of Hugo."
At one time, he was quite averse to sports themes. He was imprisoned by illness since childhood and did not like any kind of sports. "But then I understood that life is a ring."
Life is a ring, and you have to fight to the end. Life is an arena. You have only enemies and no friends on the stage. As long as you make a negligence, you will lose and die. Life is the ring, the only way to win is to keep yourself close to the enemy, and at the most dangerous moment, use all your strength and throw your fists.
Another beautiful uppercut, the sound of cutting through the air resounded in the cold early spring of 2014. I know that the eternal fighter, the contemporary Van Gogh, the saint of cinema, his 40-year film life is not over yet. He is still on the stage, still a shining boxing champion.
So I love Scorsese. He taught me to love movies.
His life is like a film school. Every great director is the same. However, the school is still open. He gave a class in 1995 called American Film Class. At the beginning he quoted Frank. Capra's famous quote: "Film is a disease. When you make a movie, you can only stop the addiction by making more movies."
The Wolf of Wall Street is a movie about addiction.
Two, Martin. Scorsese
, like Van Gogh, first aspired to be a priest. He then became an artist with the same religious fanaticism and self-destructive devotion.
Therefore, when Akira Kurosawa was promoting "Shadow Warrior" in Cannes, a young man with thick eyebrows knocked on the door of his hotel with a thick document. The speed of speaking like a machine gun caught the translator by surprise. With a short body and an impetuous look, he is talking about the history of movies for nearly a hundred years. Film is being destroyed, and the memory of film will be lost forever, he talks about the responsibility of contemporary filmmakers and the vast project of film restoration. I forgot whether Kurosawa Akira had a joint signature at that time, but there should be. However, the movie emperor in his later years saw fanaticism from this junior. So, he asked him to play Van Gogh, the spokesperson of art fanaticism.
In The Dream, Scorsese is capturing Van Gogh's last painting, The Crows, in front of a nightmarish wheat field. It's a Japanese director's film and the character is a Dutchman who plays an Italian immigrant who speaks English. Cinema is universal, history, art and memory spanning the entire twentieth century.
By the way, the co-producer of this film is one of the most prominent film masters among Kurosawa Akira's protege, Steven Spielberg.
Akira Kurosawa, the director who conquered the world with "Rashomon" in the 1950s, failed at the box office in the 1970s and attempted suicide. In cooperation with Russia, "Deza Ursula" was filmed under extremely difficult circumstances. The great man of the past lost the stage, but on the other side of the ocean, a group of students who had never met before appeared. Francis. Coppola, George. Lucas was the producer of his "Shadow Warriors," followed by Spielberg.
Movies are global. Thirty years ago, Akira Kurosawa looked at John. Ford's movies are like Spielberg and Coppola watching Kurosawa's movies thirty years later. Also, by the way, the director of "Ratatouille", "The Incredibles", "Iron Giant" and "Mission Impossible 4", Brad. Byrd, he was a student with John. Lasseter said: "One day we will use cartoons to make movies like Scorsese and Coppola." Movies transcend time and space.
Scorsese is a Hollywood director who believes in authorism, which makes him an outlier and makes his situation very difficult. In fact, his predicament didn't ease until the mid-1990s, and in fact, two thousand years ago, he mostly made independent films on a tight budget.
Why? Because he believes that the film must shoot itself, which is the only honest subject. Most of his films are about his own life, especially childhood. The long shot of the flight at the opening of "Hugo's Adventure" finally stopped at the clock in the station hall. Behind the number "four", there is a young man's staring eyes, blazingly looking at the warm yellow station, and the people below: they have a life, And he didn't; in "Good Guys", Henry Hill's first line of narration is: "Since I can remember, I have wanted to be a gangster, and for me, being a gangster is better than being the president of the United States. Be cool." At that time, he looked out the window, and a group of gangsters were driving Cadillacs, parked in front of the fire hydrant and frolic, same, they had a life, but he didn't; Rubbing the young Howard. Hughes, then said: "QUARANTINE, QUARANTINE, isolation, the outside is very dangerous."
His character has weak willpower, low self-esteem and closed, fragile personality, therefore, in order to make up for the broken self-esteem, the heart is always for fame, fortune, for power, Incredibly hot.
So, in "God and Ghosts", Matt Damon's last gaze is the golden dome of the Parliament. If you don't see the desire for power, the cruelty of the status class, the culture of immigrants, and the history of Boston in "Infernal Affairs", then you can't understand why this movie has such a high evaluation in Europe and the United States. What struggles between Matt Damon and Leonardo is not commitment, loyalty, and good and evil, but desire, status, and a desolate immigrant history. This is a movie only Scorsese can make. Unlike the Hong Kong version of romance and compactness, this is a return to the gangster epic.
At the end of "Goodbye Alice", he commented on the soundtrack and said "Love hurts." The last line at that time was a young boy hugged by his mother on the street. He said, "I can't breathe.
" It was Scorsese's pain, because of the illness, the asthma that haunted him in childhood made him unable to breathe. He was always alone, staring at the world outside, and the TV inside. He doesn't belong to either. His only focus is the movies on TV, and the only good moments of his freedom are his parents or older brothers who occasionally take him to the movies.
In "The Adventures of Hugo", the little boy said: "My father used to take me to the movies, and then we would forget my mother." That little boy, Scorsese, when watching movies, he did not Then there is the lonely and frail child who owns the whole world.
His life is the stare, and his world is the movie. He is outside the screen, the world is inside the screen. He is in the room, the world is outside the window. So, he dreamed of crossing this screen, so he dreamed of becoming a director and entering the world of dream-making - Hollywood. Even though there are countless non-artistic considerations here, even though this is perhaps the scarcest commercial gold mine for art, he still considers himself a Hollywood man. He said that because he is an American director, he is a Hollywood director.
Is this thing so easy to equate? Just ask Woody Allen! He belongs in New York; just ask the Coen brothers, the patron saint of independent filmmakers who never needed or wanted to step into the world of big studios. It's Scorsese dialectics, as long as there is love and passion, anything is possible.
Then, forty years later, in his Lifetime Achievement Award speech, he said with a sob in his voice that he couldn't do it, he would never do it, he couldn't participate in that moving moment of film birth like a director in the golden age, No matter how much he thought, he would never belong to them.
This is also Scorsese's dialectics. He was born in the 1940s, not the 1980s and 1990s. This was impossible, but because he wanted to, he believed he could do it. Just as he once dreamed of "being America's Fellini". He is not Fellini, no one can be Fellini, he can only be Scorsese, thank goodness.
The same obsession, also in "Buffalo", Jack. LaMotta frowned and said, "Look at my hand, it's so small, like a woman's hand."
His brother Joey said, "What's the problem? Are you crazy?"
"That means I'll never be able to fight Joe Lewis, I'll never be able to fight the best."
"He's heavyweight, you're middleweight. Level, you can't fight in the first place."
Got it? To fantasize about being able to do the impossible, to fantasize about being someone other than yourself, and then grieve for it, is the Scorsese dialectic, a quirky loop of eternal self-torture.
Regardless of his fantasies, his brilliance belongs to the seventies. At that time, there was a group of students who grew up watching the movies of the golden age, and they learned about the French New Wave and the Italian New Realism in school. They were nourished by the nutrients of the United States and Europe. Oh yes, don’t forget that there are also black Ze Ming, the hero of their generation.
After graduation, these students went to the exploitative film master Roger. Coleman's company makes bad movies. And then go to the eyes of Hollywood. They were called New Hollywood, and he was one of these young and successful filmmakers called "Film Boys."
Even at the time, perhaps only a few thought he was the best, Roger Roger, who was loyal to him. Albert is one of them. Before him, there was Francis. Coppola, after him, there is Stephen. Spielberg. They made The Godfather and Jaws. Ending an entire era, the wave of box-office blockbusters came and he was overwhelmed, at first glance.
Many years later, Spielberg said in an interview that Scorsese was the best of them all because he was still honest.
He became a hero, many years later, Quentin. Tarantino, the contemporary king of exploitative films, recalls Brian.
What DePama said: "No matter how good you think you are, no matter how hard you try, there will always be a Scorsese watching you." Years of movies, and for the next 20 years, we gave each other awards.” But the difference is that De Niro is old and enjoying a semi-retired life. And Scorsese is still in the ring, his opponent is eternity, the void, the cruel god of art, and the infinite future. Then, one by one, cutting through the air, the short-haired grandfather told us that he was still able to fight. He used to be a boxing champion, and he still is.
So, who is The Wolf of Wall Street? Perhaps, it is the self who is always lonely in the heart and wants to escape and escape to drug addiction.
Scorsese suffered two major setbacks in his life. The first and most tragic one was because of drugs.
Robert De Niro walks the streets of New York in 1976. He was wearing a heavy coat, and the road ahead seemed to never end. He was driving a taxi. Under the soundtrack of Bernachman, the yellow iron box was like a coffin. In the dark city, the sewers constantly spewed white smoke. In Travis' eyes, New York was hell, and he walked through this The angel of redemption from the depths of sin.
This is "Taxi Driver", an era lament and an existential manifesto written in light, shadow and jazz.
One year, when Scorsese went to Mongolia, a young local driver said to him, "I like your "Taxi Driver" so much. You filmed loneliness. You really understand that feeling."
"Thank you."
" Then...I want to ask, what do you do when you are lonely."
"Work, I work when I am lonely."
"So, does work make you not lonely?"
"My child, no matter how you work, it will always be the same. Alone."
The film won the Cannes Palme d'Or, the most honorable award for world cinema. Scorsese is like a yellow robe, standing on the cusp of New Hollywood. In Quentin's webcast, he said that Scorsese was about to shoot the Columbia director who wanted to cut the film. Quentin's tone is reverent, is it right to kill for the movie? I don't think that's a problem for this movie freak. They are all lunatics.
Then, the studio (it should be United Artists) gave him a sum of money to make a blockbuster, a real blockbuster, not a stretched independent film, "New York. New York". The film ushered in Scorsese's first fiasco, as he went through a triple crisis of career, marriage and physicality while filming.
First, the movie is too long, the budget is too high, the shooting time is too long, and the box office is too bad. He deliberately shot with a 1.66:1 academy ratio, which went against the wide-screen trend at the time and was described as "box-office suicide". All the scenes are extravagant interior scenes, imitating his idol Vincent. Minnelli 40s and 50s style. Going against the trend of the times, stubbornly standing in front of Don Quixote, but dreaming of success, longing to be loved and recognized, this is the dialectics of Scorsese.
To what extent is he obsessed with idols? The heroine of this film is Lisa. Minnelli, Vincent. Minnelli and Judy. Garland's daughter. Lisa in the movie. Minnelli painted exaggerated makeup to imitate her mother's look.
Then, Scorsese challenged one of America's greatest genres: musicals, without giving it a happy ending. In fact, almost none of his films have happy endings, except for The Adventures of Hugo. Ironically, the last song and dance of the movie is called "Happy Ending".
This movie is a terrible loss, this is a masterpiece that has been missed by the times. In 1977, the brief wave of new Hollywood indie films was about to fall, as the same year saw the appearance of a film that would forever change the history of world cinema, the dreaded Star Wars.
Then, he had an affair during the production of the film. The object of the affair is Lisa. minnelli. Infatuated with the idol's daughter, this is the first time. A devout Catholic, he believed that extramarital affairs would go to hell, but he still betrayed his beliefs.
Finally, he started taking drugs at this time. He drank a lot of cocaine, so much that on the set, the filmmaker asked a team of medical staff to stand by at any time. He would fall down at any time, but he also wanted to make this film at any time. "New York. New York is a dream too extravagant, a heartbreak too beautiful. He has always dreamed of a day when the writer's theory and the blockbuster merge, but ignoring the mutually exclusive nature of the two, so he always struggles, always suffers, and always pushes forward.
In short, "New York. New York failed then and succeeded later. The movie's theme song became Judy. Garland's 1939 "Wizard of Oz" theme song "Beyond the Rainbow" is the most famous theme song, so famous that many people don't know "New York. The song "New York" was originally the theme song of the movie.
He once said in "American Film Lesson" (1995 documentary, Lu translation: Martin Scorsese's American film journey): The director's dilemma is whether the film is made for himself or for others? Be loyal to yourself, or be loyal to the market. It sounds reasonable at first, but is it really so?
Michael. Be in a dilemma? George. Is Lucas in a dilemma? What about Bergman? What about Woody Allen? What about Gundam?
Only Scorsese, with his eccentric passion and obsessive love, will always be bruised and bruised in front of the windmill and dream of being smashed to pieces in front of the windmill.
He has been on drugs and has become addicted. He knows that the most fascinating thing about drugs is not stimulation and escape, but the ultimate drug that Leonardo came up with: self-esteem - "make yourself feel like a better person."
"The Wolf of Wall Street" "Jordan. Belfort is a weak person. He doesn't know how to face the failures in life, let alone the successes in life, so he avoids, that's why he takes drugs.
Drugs, can make people not sober, can make people not suffering. So Balfour said, "I don't want to be awake when I die," and said, "Sober is boring enough to kill myself."
That's the ultimate temptation, because he hates himself.
His real addiction isn't drugs, it's movies. De Niro once said that the biggest regret of Scorsese's life is that he can't marry movies. If someone invents a machine that can make love with film, Scorsese will definitely buy it, and then share the film with his treasured film... oh ...1946...16mm..."
Then he came back, he quit drugs, and he used the kamikaze style to make a comeback movie. This is the most fascinating, poetic, and most painful movie about destruction I've ever seen, Bull. Always number one in my heart.
He lay in the hospital bed thinking about the end of his movie life. At this time, De Niro came in and threw him a script and a sentence: "You know we can make this movie."
"Cow", AFI voted No. 1 sports movie, De Niro's greatest The acting, perhaps the best American movie of the 80s.
That's the out-of-the-box champion Jack. La Motta's story. LaMotta was a boxer born in New York in the 1940s, who became a world champion, nicknamed "The Bull" and "Bronx Bull". In the first episode of "The Godfather", the assassination scene at the fruit stand has a poster of La Motta in the background.
Scorsese has never wanted to make the film, but De Niro has been lobbying for years, getting someone to write the script, and a near-self-mutilating weight gain plan. After many years, many actors have been on the road to gain weight and become ugly.
For the sake of friends, for his last dream, and for LaMotta's humble and broken life, he quit drugs, returned to the back of the camera, and became a director again. At this time, what he thought in his mind was: "Fight for the last time, and then give up." He said this was called the "Kamikaze" shooting method.
LaMotta is a muddled beast, the screenwriter Paul Schreeder thinks so, but Scorsese and De Niro saw the devout religious emotion and the redemption and love of life in this "cockroach".
In the rubbish heaps blooming flowers, in the lust for noble liberation, in hell, stands Jesus Christ. Intractable contradictions coexist, bizarre reconciliations of binary oppositions, the destroyers are angels, the fallen are saints, alike, the eccentric Scorsese dialectics.
LaMotta never returned to glory, but Scorsese returned to the ring and has never been down again.
Later, he summed up these films as follows: "Taxi Driver is Xu Ruide's film, Bull is De Niro's film, and The Last Temptation of Christ is my film.
" The content of The Wolf of Wall Street? The middle-aged Pi said: "Don't worry, I'll talk about it over there."
I want to add a sentence after that sentence: "The Wolf of Wall Street is a Leonardo movie."
In short, this is Scorsese's first setback. A few years later, he will face the second setback of his life. That is the last film mentioned in the above quote, The Last Temptation of Christ.
3. The Last Temptation of Christ
In a speech, Ang Lee mentioned that there are two types of movies: "movies about movies" and "movies about life".
Now there are fewer and fewer movies that belong to the latter, the kind of sincere work that was born as an apprentice on the set, has no profound film knowledge and literacy, and has intuitive and pure tentacles. Changes in the media have made us sophisticated, impetuous, accessible, observant and staring, and unbelieving. The Internet and multiple platforms have made movies no longer a mysterious ritual in a dark room, but a quick and easy pastime.
There are more and more movie fans, and fewer and fewer people sincerely face life. Such as Pauline. As Kyle said, the whole generation is picking up Quentin. Tarantino's scum.
In "The Story of the Movie", director Mark. Cousins said that the characters in almost every film since 1995 looked like they came out of Black Wanted. And this movie, when Paul won the Palme d'Or. Xu Ruide said: "This film will be forgotten in twenty years, and there is no sincere emotion in it."
He was right in the last sentence, but wrong in the first sentence. The entire generation is surrounded by this brilliant and arrogant boy, and the new generation of films about steelmaking by local methods has gone crazy on the altar.
Fewer and fewer movies about life, but more and more movies about movies. It's a crisis, and self-indulgent films end up being dull, unimaginative and unglamorous. But this statement may not hold true for Scorsese, because movies are his life.
"I love movies, that's my whole life."
If you were to ask who is the greatest American director of our time, I wouldn't say it would be Scorsese. Coppola made himself immortal in just ten years, David. Woods, Coen Brothers, Terrence. Malik is still active on the front lines.
But if one were to ask who is the most avid filmmaker in contemporary America, it would be Scorsese.
At the Oscars in 2006, there were three people on stage at the Best Director Awards ceremony. They are Francis. Coppola, Stephen. Spielberg and George. Lucas.
These three people stood up, almost like Hollywood for forty years. In the past 40 years, no one has been as noble as Coppola. In just ten years, five films have won five Oscars and two Palme d'Or, each of which is a classic of film history.
For forty years there has been no one like Stephen. Spielberg is as famous as Spielberg, he is the most famous and influential director in the world. Even if there is only a little bit of knowledge about movies, there is only one director's name in the world, and that person will be Stephen C. Spielberg. Top-grossing genre directors, best filmmakers, most powerful filmmakers.
The last one is the most profitable director in the past 40 years. Lucasfilm has created a prosperous era of high-concept movies. It turns out that movies can be this kind of thing, selling everything and never dying. Lucas has long gone beyond the concept of a director. His creative empire is an endless gold mine. Lucasfilm has made a shallow, innocent, romantic and moving fairy tale into an eternal money printing machine, covering all media that can make money. oriented. In 2015, "Star Wars VII" directed by JJ Abrams was released, and the story of Lucas continued, even if he was just sunbathing on a yacht every day.
The Evangelion completion plan with unlimited drag money is just Lucas' wisdom.
JJ and Spielberg also have a touching friendship, which I have a chance to talk about.
How influential is Lucas? At that time, Lucasfilm had two studios, one for immersive special effects and the other for 3D animation. The former was called Industrial Light and Magic, the best special effects studio in the world for decades. The latter was bought by Jobs. Then they made Toy Story, and they called it Pixar.
But only the winner of their three winners, there is something missing, a spirit of perseverance, a painful journey. That's why cinema is called art, seen as a great invisible force. There is also a loser who will not admit defeat, a challenger who will always stand in the ring.
The three old men were telling weird jokes. They said that everyone on the stage had won an Oscar.
Lucas suddenly said, oh wait, I don't, but at least I have the nomination. Anyway, I'm very happy to be here today, because it is more blessed to give than to receive.
The other two quickly said, no, no, it is definitely better to take it.
Then, the winners are announced. Scorsese's first sentence said: "Can you check if there is a wrong name on it?"
From the stage to the stage, he walked for thirty years. These four people are the movie boys who changed the world at the beginning.
No matter how many people didn't get an Oscar, like Orson. Wells, Hitchcock and Kubrick, no matter how many people disdain Oscar, especially his fellow Woody Allen, he still wants to get this boring and ridiculous name, which is his dream.
He said, "I've been watching the Oscars for as long as I can remember. That was my childhood dream."
What is an Oscar? It's the highest honor in Hollywood, not the highest honor in the art of cinema, and that's where it gets criticized. Represents the narrow tastes of a particular group of people whose tastes are not necessarily superior. Scorsese has long been recognized as a film master, but he still yearns for an Oscar. Perhaps the most desired person in the world.
Is he craving Oscars? What he longed for was acceptance in Hollywood. What's interesting is that this old man who always magnifies his childhood fantasies infinitely longs not to be accepted by Hollywood people on and off the stage, but to be accepted by the directors of that period in the room.
He longed to be accepted by the directors of the golden age and become one of them, so the Oscars were so important to him. That's why Woody Allen disdains Oscar so much, he doesn't care about Hollywood at all.
At an awards ceremony, Woody Allen was asked to be a guest. He refused. He said, "Shouldn't we ask Scorsese for awards?" So hard to choose. The hard part is wanting everything.
Is it that hard to figure out what the Oscars taste like? Of course not to the highly skilled and accomplished Scorsese, but the same obsession and obsession. He wants to be himself, so he will not be favored by the conservative Academy of Film Arts. He wants to be himself, so he can't keep up with the big wave of high concept that kicked off in 1977.
Can't he? I don't want to. You see, here it is again, the dialectics of Scorsese. He wants to be himself, does not want to compromise, but wants to be loved. Lucas said at the time, if "New York. New York" is changed to a comedy ending, and the box office can be increased by 10 million.
Scorsese said, "I'm not like this guy, he just makes movies to make money."
Like Bergman, the filming is very economical, money is never a problem, very short shooting time, simple scenes, veteran actors, hundreds of thousands of dollars can be done, high-yield, high-quality, low-risk, with superb skills and performance, profound script and avant-garde concepts. Undoubtedly good movie, free creative space, cheap.
But Scorsese dreams of big studios, big budgets, intricate camera movements and dreamlike sets, makeup, lighting, special effects, large crews, those golden age big productions that fascinated him as a child. So he needs money, more than many people, but he is more afraid of compromising money than many people. He is so contradictory, and he is so troublesome.
So, make him so unique. Contradictions and hardships made him, stupidity and obsession made him, and when the three people on the stage had already received the dividends of their youthful ambitions, he was still as hard as a boxer who lost weight. I saw an interview with him, after the release of "Hugo", he said: "Am I repeating the same thing all the time, am I running out of new tricks, am I just from the 1940s to the 1960s? Product?"
No arrogance, no complacency, no joy, full of restlessness and fear. In the end, how long are you going to torture yourself?
In short, this fragile child who desires to be loved more than anyone else always makes waves. Yelling, cursing, rioting, protesting, someone watched his movie to assassinate Regan, someone watched his movie as a demon and set off a bomb in a movie theater.
In 2013, after the screening of "The Wolf of Wall Street", a member of the Academy of Film Arts came to him and cursed him as shameful.
Why? What sensitive nerve is this self-mourning, self-intoxicating shadow idiot arousing?
After Scorsese began his career in film, there was a story that fascinated him. He is a superstitious and devout Catholic. Like Van Gogh, he believes that religion can save himself and the world. The salvation of Christianity is fully embodied in one person, the hero of Scorsese and all believers, Jesus Christ.
If you want to be saved by Jesus Christ, it must be that Jesus Christ is a fragile person, so that he can save the fragile me. Scorsese is so convinced. Jesus Christ had to be human, he had to have desires and fears, so that he could save me.
The strength of the lion and the freedom of the eagle have no meaning for man, because I am a man, they are not a man, and God is not a man. The strength of the weak and the freedom of prisoners are meaningful to talents. I am human and can only be saved by people. Only man can tell me what a man can do.
This is a very simple inference of belief, but also a very bold provocation. Likewise, the paradoxical Scorsese dialectic: saint or prostitute.
Scorsese's debut, the main focus of the discussion of strange silly plot. If you can get a woman, it means she is not good enough, she is a prostitute, so you will get it. If you can't get a woman, it means she is very good, she is a saint, so you desperately want to get her.
If you can't pursue it, it will be extremely painful, and if you get it, it will be extremely painful.
For a long time I didn't understand the source of this complex, and then I came down to it this way: because he hated himself.
Jean Reno said: "Every director only makes one film in his life, and other works are just footnotes and variations." Contradiction is the starting point of Scorsese, and it is also the eternal theme.
Vulnerability can save frailty, strength cannot; sinners have redemption, saints do not; hate is love, betrayal is loyalty. A saint is a prostitute, and death is rebirth.
This is the Greek novelist Nicholas. Viewpoint of Kazansky's novel The Last Temptation of Christ.
Weak and humble, Jesus Christ lay on the ground and begged, "God, Father in heaven, please do not love me." He married and had children, escaping the oracle, and Judas was the lone hero, burdened with the burden of killing Jesus Christ. His eternal mission of sanctification.
Judas was a hero, Jesus was a coward, and Jesus almost gave in, succumbed to Satan's last temptation: before he became mortal. What a wonderful thing it would be if I could not be the Son of God, not the Messiah, or be an ordinary carpenter, marry a wife and have children, grow old, be sad and happy, forget and get old.
If the great world is not the ultimate temptation, what is? Longing for the ordinary is the only liberation of the saints.
This is Scorsese's ultimate hero, the dream theme. He had always dreamed that he would be able to make this film. In 1980, "Cow" was well received, but it did not perform well at the box office, and then Scorsese and De Niro filmed "The King of Comedy" and "New York. Like "New York", it was another heavy setback, and it was also similar to "New York. Like New York, The King of Comedy is another great Scorsese film that is underrated.
Chen Kaige said, "It is enough for a creator to make three films, namely "Taxi Driver", "Wild Cow" and "King of Comedy"."
Chen Kaige is satisfied, but Scorsese is not.
In the 2012 "Sight and Sound" poll, Coppola selected his top ten films, "King of Comedy" and "Buffalo" among them. Akira Kurosawa has a list of 100 people and 100 movies, Scorsese, he
will introduce it after he chooses "The King of Comedy" and "The King of Comedy".
At this time, Scorsese got a budget, and finally a film company was willing to invest in "The Last Temptation of Christ". When the script, casting, and venue were all finalized and ready to shoot, the whole project was suddenly called off. The studio executives were worried about the sensitivity of the subject matter, so they called off the project, and would rather throw the early money into the water.
Also during this period, he encountered the crisis of marriage. His third wife, like Lisa Minnelli, her lover at the time, was also the daughter of a great director, but this time she had a bigger background and a more prominent life experience.
In the 1940s, a letter appeared: "Dear Director: Would you like to use a Swedish actress who only understands 'I love you' in Italian?" A superstar who fell in love with the director because of his fascination with his works, gave up his flourishing career , Abandoned his family and children, he went to Italy to shoot a movie alone, just for his beloved director.
The actress is Ingrid. Bergman, directed by Rossellini. Like Vincent Minnelli, Rossellini was also a Scorsese hero, and he fell in love with the idol's daughter, Isabella. Rossellini. His life was as broken as the stories in his movies, and the marriage ended in three years. When Bergman came to Italy from the United States, this time his daughter Isabella Rossellini returned to the United States from Italy.
Movies span time and space, beyond the screen and inside a small room, beyond reality and fantasy. Movies are intertwined with life, and his life is only movies.
Sadly, perhaps the filmmakers were right. The 1997 "Dalai Lama's Life" with a similar theme not only had a mediocre box office, but also made Disney banned by the CCP for many years. Another movie that made waves.
wake up. Scorsese once again had the intention of quitting. "Cow" didn't win the Oscar for best director, and it suffered consecutive box office failures and a once-in-a-lifetime gamble. He wanted to leave again. At this time, it was only three years away from the great "Wild Cow".
Shortly afterward, British actor and producer Donald J. Griffin wants to make a dark and humorous urban comedy called "After get off work". They had brought this case to Scorsese, and Scorsese was interested, but he was working on the pre-production of The Last Temptation of Christ at this time.
At that time, they were looking for young and potential directors to direct, after all, the budget and reputation were limited. At that time, they liked an animated short film "Vincent" very much. The style was weird and warm, childlike and gloomy. The thin characters were like funny nightmares, and the unique and unforgettable Goethe style.
The young director's name is Tim. Bolton.
About to start filming, Scorsese came to the news, "The Last Temptation of Christ" was canceled, and he was going to direct "After Hours". Tim. When Bolton learned that Scorsese was interested, he quit immediately and gave up the job opportunity to Scorsese.
Scorsese made a comeback, and the film was done at a very low cost ($4.5 million) and won Best Director in Cannes in 1986.
Then, another filmmaker was willing to invest in "The Last Temptation of Christ". It’s just that the cost is less than half of the original, the entire schedule is very embarrassing, and there is a shortage of funds. Scorsese bites the bullet and finishes the film. Before the release, there were religious groups who wanted to pay for the film to be destroyed, followed by many boycotts, waves of protests, and terrorist attacks.
Some say it's the worst movie ever made.
Why? What is the alluring power of Scorsese's films that makes his personal expression always rebellious and turbulent? His films are not particularly pornographic, violent or cruel. It is indeed a relatively large-scale movie, but compared with the unbridled exploitation movies, or the false violence of Hollywood action movies, the direct and brutal desecration of religion by horror movies, there is no need to resist Scorsese's movies. But it is always controversial.
I think the reason lies in his title "Film Sociologist".
4. The lens of film sociologist
Scorsese allows you to enter the character's perspective and watch the whole absurd and bizarre world. Go into their lives and normalize everything that is not normal, violence, sin and depravity are so commonplace that you breathe the fresh air of a sinful world.
He often adapts biographies, and it's interesting that none of these biographies are the type of subjects that a typical director would shoot. He chose ordinary people in a special world, small characters in the border world.
Someone said, Jordan. Balfour is not worth making a movie at all, he is just a fringe on Wall Street, a clown who can't get on the stage, a nouveau riche. Companies like Stratton can only speculate on immortal stocks. They have nothing to do with the financial tsunami and financial turmoil, and only a very small number of people are really deceived. This is an unrepresentative company. The so-called "Wolf of Wall Street" is not a powerful tyrant, just a novice, a liar who is too arrogant and crashes immediately.
That's right and wrong.
No matter how eloquent Balfour may be, it still can't tell us how terrible the financial world is and how the conspiracy behind the numbers can destroy our world. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Lehman Brothers, or Rothschild, where he started working, is the real man behind it. Like Jeremy in "Confessions of a Black-Hearted Trader". Same as Alan. You have no idea what he's doing, how he got to that seat, where he came from and where he's going.
The real bad guys don't get caught, and after destroying the world, they can get on a jet plane and ask for money from the president of the United States. An evil group that has been inbred like feudal aristocracy for hundreds of years.
Jordan. Belfort? He picked up some leftover scraps, and it looked ugly, stupid enough to buy the FBI? Why photograph this person? You see he has nothing to do with him at all, the only IPO is Danny's high school classmate, and the only person willing to help him launder money is a sloppy college classmate.
Real demons are elegant and mysterious, and they are as close to Stratton as the Vatican is to emerging religions. They have been slaughtering infidels and witches thousands of years ago, and they have changed into white clothes in the past hundred years, and immediately transformed themselves into representatives of order, tradition and civilization. The method of putting poison gas on the subway is like a child's play compared to what the Holy See did thousands of years ago.
This question is also the same. In "The Four Seas", regardless of Henry. No matter how smart Hill is, and no matter how ruthless Jimmy and Tommy are, they are just a few tricks. They couldn't get into that world, they couldn't get into that little room upstairs in The Godfather.
Likewise, why did Leonardo have to be undercover in "Breakthrough"? because of his origin. His entire family is a prisoner, and he came from the bottom of society, why did he climb up? And why did Matt Dimon cut Jack Nixon? The same is true, he wants to climb up, they are only marginal people, not some big bosses who turn their hands over the clouds.
What are such characters and stories trying to tell us? How does Wall Street work? How do American gangsters rule the underground society?
No, these people are scalpels, cutting open the tangled belly, what you see are ordinary people. Jordan. Belfort is very ordinary, Henry. Hill is very ordinary. They are ordinary people who are lucky and a little smart. Without great wisdom, great means and great strategies, they only have small tricks that can be broken with a poke. They are always in chaos, and they are extremely weak.
same as us.
Like "Society Network Wars", "The Great Citizen" or "The Godfather", they are movies of big people, and Scorsese tells the stories of little people, because we are little people. We can only understand very simple things, only yearn for very simple things, and simply accept the sinful world he depicted, because everything is very simple. "The Wolf of Wall Street" is not about how powerful these people are, but about how fragile people are. One minute of posturing can easily defeat a person. A luxury sports car can make a person's eyes shine. Look how stupid, how blind, and how similar these people are to us?
This is a story around us, and a story that we can step into at any time when we cross the line.
The scary thing about Scorsese's story is that you get to experience that destruction firsthand. Because that is not the madness of the solitary king, but the loneliness and desolation in the heart of the little man.
Maybe we won't make Balfour's money, but will we be listening to Balfour's lectures with eyes shining?
Many will, because he understands us mortals, because he is as weak as we are, we love him, we need him.
As long as your dreams come true, as long as you want to get rich, you will fall in love with Jordan. Belfort. And who doesn't dream of these two things?
Scorsese looks for the universality of people in a special world, unlike the usual Hollywood pretense: "Ordinary people show extraordinary courage in extraordinary moments; or, under the appearance of great people, they are still ordinary and unyielding. Soul."
No, no, no, Scorsese always finds ordinary people with universal significance in a special world, and it takes us two or three hours to wake up with a shock that we are so close to that world. His lens is aimed at the little people in the big era, that is us, just happened to be born in a different time and space. Oscar loves big-time bigwigs, but Scorsese rummages through the world of sin for mediocre humanity.
The sense of identity, the power of realism, the depiction of life details, and the presentation of community culture make him a unique film sociologist. He never wrote biographies for famous people, but only digs the trivial life trivia in the mud. So when you see it, Travis is not a murderer, LaMotta is not a violent man, Henry Hill is not a born criminal, and Jordan Belfort is not a wolf of Wall Street in his bones. They are weak, mediocre, lonely people who yearn to be loved and belonged, not fundamentally different from us.
This is his point of view. The contradictions that have been entangled over the years, in the face of Don Quixote, who has been defeated and fought repeatedly, has allowed him to create a unique and magical ability. are one.
Scorsese is the best documentary director of contemporary Hollywood power figures; and the best genre director of documentary directors. He diligently shoots documentaries and puts a documentary style in genre films. Real scenes, improvisations, and most importantly, a sense of life. They crap, they eat, they live. He interlaces realism and fantasy, truth and fiction, expressionism and realism, drama and authenticity.
His films keep us out of the way, straight to the heart, unsettling and inescapable. This is the dialectic of Scorsese, saints are mortals, sinners are mortals, and even inconspicuous events, the strong force of resonance, constitute a very provocatively intense work. John. After Sinclair watched Taxi Driver fifteen times in a row, he attempted to assassinate Regan, but fortunately failed. We can't console ourselves after watching a movie that we're not part of it, or console ourselves that it's over and the story has a happy ending.
The most false thing in Hollywood is the illusion of cheap selling to save the world. The world is going down, and we are not only helpless, not just indifferent, we even want to be a part of it.
Many people say "The Wolf of Wall Street" is evil, because he did not condemn Jordan. Belfort. Punishing sin in a movie is as cheap as saving the world in a movie. The fact is Jordan. Balfour paid nothing, and we don't care about the victims.
Those viewers who think Scorsese doesn't care about victims and glorify crimes, I want to ask, do these people care about victims? With so much sin and terror, violence and lies, when have we ever cared? Why do you suddenly have to sit up and care when you arrive at the movie theater?
When did we ever care about Agent Dannon again? Is this the real world? Why did I suddenly lie in front of the camera?
Is this the "liberation" that movies give us?
Scorsese doesn't eat that. If he's lying, he's a makeup artist for evil, not a sociologist. He makes us see the ugly, see the truth, and make us restless.
His films say: "Every city has a loner", "Every man has to walk through his own cruel streets."
Dark night of the soul, have you passed the test? Squeaky tattered carriage, have you passed the test? Maybe you have, but look at the longing eyes of those people in the audience, they don't want to pass the test. You know, Jordan. Balfour is right. The only thing that everyone regrets about selling their souls is that they didn't sell enough.
It's easy to escape in a movie, it's just a few words in the script.
But, as I keep saying, Scorsese has been a fighter all his life, and he's not going to lie.
It's finally time to enter The Wolf of Wall Street. I've been chattering all the time before, just to delay the topic. After all, what a broad and profound comprehensive art is the film, the short learning process and superficial talent are really not enough to discuss the film, let alone the film of Scorsese.
However, in the spirit of fans promoting idols, I still tried to write down my half-understood opinions, so it was a small talk.
5. Why "The Wolf of Wall Street" is not just the Wall Street version of "The Wolf of Wall Street" - the power and limitations of the "Good Guys of the World" mode
Perhaps every viewer familiar with Scorsese will immediately discover "The Wolf of Wall Street" , a shadow of Scorsese's past work.
As far as I am concerned, to understand the breakthrough of Leonardo and Scorsese, and to understand "The Wolf of Wall Street", we must consider these five films at the same time, namely: "Goodfellas", "Bull", "The Wolf of Wall Street". "The King of Comedy", "Ghost Players" and "The Wolf of Wall Street".
At the 1991 Oscars ceremony, the short Joe. Pixi took the stage and said what may be the shortest Oscar speech in history: "My pleasure."
This movie is "Good Guys", and it actually won only one Best Supporting Actor. The year's best picture, best director was awarded to Kevin. Costner's "Dances with Wolves". I don't know if the Academy of Film Arts will regret it later, but I think history has proved that these two films are completely at different levels. If the situation is reasonable, this film should at least win the best film, director, cinematography of the year. , Editing four awards.
If anyone really wants to read this rambling article to get to this place and don't know Scorsese, then I really suggest that you must read "The Cosmos", at least "The Cosmos". Skip this film and it's impossible to comprehend the evolution of genre cinema in America over two decades.
"The Cosmopolitan" has influenced many subsequent films, and Scorsese has continued to use a similar style or form. The most recent "The Big Layout" (David O'Russell himself chose "The Cosmos" as his top ten Movies.), I don’t know why it became the No. 1 IMDB “Stimulus 1995”, and of course Scorsese’s own “Gambling the Country”, “God and Ghosts” and “The Wolf of Wall Street”.
"Fate of the World" was so successful that many people thought it was Scorsese's best movie. In fact, in my rankings, this movie is not in the top three of Scorsese.
There are also many people who think that Scorsese, who has been breaking through his style throughout his life, is only good at gangster movies. But in fact, Scorsese has made B-movies, women's films, sports films, religious films, musicals, comedies, sequels, thrillers, historical films, literary films, documentaries, and even children's films. The gangster type is just one facet of it. But the brilliance of the film is so captivating that it creates these beautiful misconceptions.
Look at Guillermo, the fat Mexican nerd. What would De Toro have to say:
"Skosis brings to the 21st century the most influential film of the past 20 years with 'The Mafia.' It's a film that can be watched over and over and always remains fresh and surprising."
And The same from Central and South America, Scorsese disciple Fernando. Merrills, in Brazil, made a "Lawless" that looks like "The Four Seas". He put it this way:
“There were two films that had a huge impact on me, the first was 'The Mafia,' and the structure of 'Lawless' was built on it. I especially liked Scorsese's portrayal of the gangster world. The ability to develop different characters and stories with multiple clues."
When filming "Good Guys", Scorsese told Joe. "Ford makes westerns, we make gangster films," said Pesci. He wanted to set an example for the genre.
At this time, Scorsese was light-hearted and proficient. Two years ago, he finally completed his long-cherished wish "The Last Temptation of Christ", and with his old partner De Niro completed the masterpieces "The Bull" and "The King of Comedy", "After get off work" proved that he can shoot quickly and at a low cost. Good independent production, "The Color of Money" at the box office and Paul. Newman's Oscar for best actor, so that big stars and studio confidence in him. He came out of the haze, and he no longer needed to worry about his crumbling status.
With the cold eyes of a bystander, "Fate of the World" enters a grotesque criminal world. The same pattern appeared in many of his later works. At the beginning, they all start directly from the turning point where there is no turning back. Maybe it's a murder on the highway, or a crazy game of throwing dwarfs, or an explosion in a car, and then flash back to the innocence of longing for youth.
A large number of stares and narrations allow us to gradually penetrate into the community culture depicted by Scorsese, supplemented by scenes with strong era atmosphere, makeup, accents, pop music, skilled and tacit group play, depicting the protagonist from childhood desires, teenagers The depravity of growth and adulthood, gradually merged into finally betrayal. Point of view footage and narration allow us to accept a sickly everyday life and finally destroy it. All good things end in disillusionment.
Visually extreme camera movement, zoom, track, hand-held, surround, car shooting, stabilizer, lift, a large number of extremely difficult and complex long shots, using all photography skills; the strong contrast between the soundtrack and the picture, like a shipwreck The brisk music, his serial murders in "The Four Seas", matched the pictures of corpses with the rhythm of love songs; the dialogues, sound effects and pictures were not synchronized with the gorgeous editing, and the soundtrack or dialogues were used to quickly connect different scenes, Like Matthew. McConaughey was still singing the chest-beating song, and the scene jumped from the bright company dining room to the stripper's panties. Or the joke is being told on stage, and the laughter is not stopped, and the picture cuts directly to the protagonist walking out of the airport with a big box of banknotes. Coupled with all kinds of tricks, stop-motion, acceleration, slow-motion playback, point-of-view switching, each shot is full of the character's emotion and tension.
"Visual roller coaster," Scorsese's film is described as such. "He was the most camera-ready director of his generation. He allowed you to enter the world on the screen and see the emotions of the characters." Roger. Abbott said so.
His films can often find some unforgettable scenes. For the most recent example, you can look at the second shot of the first scene of "Hugo's Adventure", a long shot of more than 50 seconds, in Howard. With Xiao's nostalgic soundtrack, the camera slowly descends from the snow-covered Paris sky, advances into the station, crosses the smoky platform, squeezes through the crowds, and then slowly rises at the station lobby, advancing to the wall clock on the wall. , close-up of the staring eyes of a young boy behind the number "4".
From the big vision to the big close-up, it is a visual feast in one go. Not to mention the three-minute long shot of "Good Guys from the World", which has already entered the textbook.
These features also appear in The Wolf of Wall Street. The two movies are very similar, and the mode power of "Fate of the World" is too powerful.
However, there is no perfect artwork, and every choice has its price. In my opinion, that's the fundamental difference between Cosmopolitan and The Wolf of Wall Street, and that's the inner depth of the main characters. When the perspective of a bystander is chosen, the excavation of a specific character's heart and the establishment of the character's image are limited. You either have to look wide or deep, which is why these films need narration so much. The result of the choice is to sacrifice the strong and vivid image of the protagonist.
The strongest character in Cosmopolitan is not the narrator, Henry Brown. Hill; The entire narrative of "Hugo's Adventure" is out of balance. The conflict of the protagonist is suddenly put aside, and the middle and back sections are completely dealing with the memories of the secondary characters. Is the protagonist Hugo or Merry? The character of the protagonist of "Lawless" is also quite weak, and the style of the story is focused on Xiaobawang. The conflict and motivation of the protagonist loses power immediately after the end of Xiaobawang's story, and the same is true for "Stimulus 1995", the narrator leads us into prison , but the inner world of the protagonist lacks authenticity and persuasion. Fortunately, there are enough clever plots to cover up.
Don't get me wrong, these films all deliver arguably the best work within the constraints of their choice, but each strategy has blind spots. The difficulty of creating a great and deep main character is what I think is the price that Mafia's narrative strategy has to pay.
And how does "The Wolf of Wall Street" explore the deeper inner heart of the protagonist in the "Fate of the World" mode?
The first is the length of the film, which was increased to three hours; then in order to focus on the protagonist, a large number of supporting roles and too many fleeting characters were sacrificed. This is the price paid for continuing to focus on Belfort's single perspective, unlike " Good Guys from the World once switched points of view in the middle, and switched to using the perspective of the heroine Karen to narrate.
And in the end, the most important thing is Leonardo. DiCaprio worked hard all the way, and finally contributed a great performance.
Six, Leonardo. What the hell is DiCaprio doing?
Jonathan of the Silence of the Lambs. Demi has a piece of "Bull" protagonist Jack. Portrait of La Motta. The frame reads: "Jack punches like he doesn't deserve to live."
Robert. De Niro and Scorsese's long-term cooperation and self-torture led to the completion of perhaps the lowest self-esteem role in film history, Jack in "Wild Bull". La Motta. But two years later, the director and actor duo released a more grotesque, more depressing, more painful, more absurd film "The King of Comedy", and the protagonist Ruburt. Pompkin's morbidity and distortion actually surpassed that of Jack. La Motta.
Robert. With a series of vulnerable, wounded, crazy characters, De Niro did as much as the duo could achieve—then the two separated until "Fate of the World" eight years later. But at this time, the two could never return to their original creativity, and Scorsese searched for more than ten years without finding the next Robert. De Niro.
Someone said, Ruburt. Pompkin is Jack without gloves. La Motta. I think not only that. These two characters are one and two sides, reflecting each other, and combining the two can reflect the peak performance of De Niro and Scorsese.
And the same past repeats itself again.
After so many years, Leonardo finally deceived himself, deceived the world, and let himself put on the king's new clothes. He's finally done a really great role.
Over the past decade, many viewers have wondered, what exactly is Leonardo doing? The characters are getting more and more entangled and painful. His performance is getting more and more hoarse, his brows are wrinkled, and his bitterness is deep. It seems that the muscles all over his body can only be tensed and cannot be relaxed. In order to get the golden statue, this guy Crazy.
I had misunderstood him that way. Until I got to know Robert. De Niro.
I think, the same age as me, who only started watching movies on Channel 4 in the mid-to-late 1990s, and went to the cinema two thousand years later, if they didn’t deliberately look for old movies, they wouldn’t know that De Niro, an increasingly obese man Why is the old man one of the greatest actors of our time.
To be honest, the first time I heard this name was in Xu Huaiyu's "I'm a Girl".
We've seen him play the Harmony star partner in "The Boss Steps aside", "The Door is Wrong" series, or as a transvestite captain in "Stardust Legend", in "The Drug Effect", "The Angry Sea Diver" There are less impressive supporting roles in these underwhelming films. It is rare for him to see his wrinkled old face at the Oscars in the past two years, because Oruso has made two consecutive films, "Pat's Happiness Script" and "The Big Layout". In any case, if you only see these movies, you cannot understand why he is a great artist.
Just as it is impossible to understand Malone if you haven't seen "A Streetcar of Desire" and "Story on the Shore". How Brando changed a generation. Sure, "The Godfather" was a good movie, but it still wasn't Brando's greatest moment.
Quentin. Tarantino once talked about De Niro like this (it is often mentioned that this gentleman is because he likes to record his own movie anecdotes and put them on the Internet, which is very interesting.):
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