Great movies invariably have great soundtracks.
Whether the music is original score or a compilation of existing songs, whether it’s in-your-face or subtle, it plays almost as big a role as the script, acting and camerawork. The best soundtracks are like another character in the film.
Martin Scorsese has long made masterful use of music in his movies. From Bernard Herrmann’s lush Taxi Driver score and Peter Gabriel’s mysterious and unsettling work on The Last Temptation of Christ to the “pop songs as score” approach of Goodfellas, he always matches the right sounds to his images.
Scorsese’s so-called “drop the needle” approach has been beautifully adopted by great filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson and (this year) David O. Russell, and artlessly mimicked by many others.
This year, at age 71, Scorsese has delivered the most audacious, go-for-broke film of his career in The Wolf of Wall Street (at three hours it’s also his longest). It’s an indictment of the excesses of morally bankrupt Wall Street tycoons that revels in that excess for about 90% of its running time. And it features on of the most wide-ranging, creative pop soundtracks of his career.
After watching The Wolf of Wall Street, I read about a dozen pans and a dozen raves and I somehow agreed with every one of them. The film is bloated, misogynistic and borderline irresponsible… and one of the most exhilarating movie-going experiences I’ve ever had. Its three hours felt more like 30 minutes.
It is often side-splittingly hilarious, a shock considering that neither Scorsese nor Leonardo DiCaprio are known for comedy. It has memorable sequences both subtle (a boat deck conversation between DiCaprio and Kyle Chandler as an FBI agent) and completely over-the-top (the Lemmon Quaalude episode… I’ll say no more).
Despite all of its flaws and excesses, and in part because of them, it is without a doubt one of the very best films of the year.
Today’s SOTD is a selection from the epic soundtrack that scores an important scene late in the film. Another brilliant choice by a master who, at 71, is still moving at light speed.
Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know,
Woah woah woah,
God bless you please
Mrs. Robinson,
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey hey hey
We’d like to know a little bit about you for our files,
We’d like to help you to learn to help yourself,
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home,
And here’s to you
Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Woah woah woah,
God bless you please
Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey hey hey
Hide it in a hiding place where no one ever goes,
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes,
It’s a little secret just the Robinsons’ affair,
Most of all you got to hide it from the kids and coo coo cachoo
Mrs. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
Woah woah woah
God bless you please
Mrs. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
Hey hey hey
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it shout about when you got to choose
Every way you look at it you lose
Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio
our nation turns its lonely eyes to you?
Woo woo woo,
What’s that you say Mrs. Robinson?
Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away
Hey hey hey
Meet Me In Montauk 
Another must see movie on my list. Seems like this weekend is going to include some movie time!
I agree with you that the movie had some great moments and the music was wonderful. I did think that it seemed like 3 hours and could have cut a little of the sex and drugs scenes; but never the Lemmon Quaalude scene (I’ll say no more) 🙂
Can’t wait to see the film. thanks for inserting a mini movie review into today’s SOTD. 😉 Clever boy!
Hated it. I’ll say no more 😦
Reactions certainly seem to fall on one side or the other.
🙂 I’m sure my expectations didn’t help.
“Hate” is a strong word, but the film didn’t work for me. And it felt every bit of 3 hours, and didn’t need to be that long. Take out a few of the drug and sex scenes (we got it after the first half dozen or so) and substitute more scenes as to how the scams actually worked and how the FBI investigated with the added benefit of more Kyle Chandler, and the movie would have been far better. Frankly, as far as directing a true story about criminal activity with outlandish, but true, events, Michael Bay did a far better job with “Pain and Gain” than Scorsese did with “Wolf.”
Be careful! The Movie Gods might strike you down where you stand for comparing Michael Bay favorably to Martin Scorsese!
Your “fixes” would be interesting, but that’s more you wanting to see a different movie than wanting this one to be better. This is a dark comedy and a satire, deliberately over-the-top and excessive.
For better or worse (and I truly appreciate both perspectives) there was no desire to make this film conventional.
Did you see “Pain and Gain?” It was far from conventional, yet managed to get in all the details of the story in less than 3 hours. Having multiple redundant sex and drug scenes doesn’t make the film unconventional. It just makes it long and bloated.
I haven’t seen Pain and Gain yet, though I’m planning to.
But it is a mathematical impossibility for Michael Bay to do a better directing job than Martin Scorsese.
I would have thought so, but not after seeing both films.😄
Obviously I was being flippant when I said I hated the film, and I, too, told Dana that uttering the names Scorsese and Bay in the same breath is all kinds of wrong. 😉 Still, I found Scorsese’s direction of Wolf lazy. Rather than try to make decisions about which scenes best conveyed certain aspects of the story, he just included them all. The end result is a film that feels redundant, and, yes, bloated. Meanwhile, he left unexplored some of the more intriguing elements of the story. I didn’t hate the film, but I sure did find it disappointing.
While it’s a convenient argument, I think it’s safe to say that Scorsese is well aware that the film is indulgent and bloated, and that it’s fully intended to be so, as a reflection of the excesses of the Wall Street robber barons.
I imagine if a viewer told Scorsese she left the film exhausted and disgusted, he’d feel he’d done his job.
I know I’m in the minority (of one) in this comment section, but I didn’t feel the film dragged at all. Exhausting, yes, but never slow. It felt nowhere near three hours to me. I would have cut the yacht scene, but that’s about it.
And I give Scorsese (and DiCaprio) credit for not moralizing. For me, three shots in the film’s closing moments drive home the message: Kyle Chandler’s FBI agent on the subway, Belfort playing tennis in prison and the great final shot of the rapt audience listening to Belfort’s spiel.
The world isn’t fair, the rich get away with everything, and we’re all lining up to get in on the action.
I wasn’t exhausted, and not really all that bored. However, I think it is a cop out and major rationalization to say that he wanted the audience to find the film redundant and bloated, which is what we are all saying, as are many critics.
“Goodfellas” put you through all the similar paces and experiences of depravity and excesses and moral ambiguity, yet never felt redundant and bloated, so it’s not as if the man doesn’t know how to make that type of movie. He just, as Amy said, was lazy here, or perhaps became so enamored with the performances that he just didn’t want to trim it down.
Well, this movie is no Goodfellas, I’ll grant you that.
And no, I don’t think he wanted viewers to find the movie “redundant and bloated” but I do think he wanted them to find it excessive.
I like Roger Ebert’s theory that an entertaining movie can’t be too long and a bad movie can’t be too short. This movie didn’t feel long to me, so while I agree it could have been shorter, I didn’t think it needed to be. I laughed and grimaced and was entertained throughout its running time.