Watched the movie last night with TAG. A late night show starting at 10PM. Somehow, it always happens – these late night shows get decided at the last minute; we happened to fix this one at 9:10PM. And inadvertently we end up in the nick of time before the show begins, and then someone has to go to the loo and take time, and we enter after the first scene has passed. That’s not all, no matter how entertaining the movie is, someone looks at their watch after about 1.5 hours to see what’s the time to discover that one hour 30 minutes have actually passed and the interval has not arrived. Someone then whispers that we should’ve checked the runtime of the movie, at which point someone does, and it is established that the movie’s 3 hours long and we won’t be home before 1:30 AM. At that time, I generally walk up to the confectionary stall during interval and fix myself a meal and some dessert. (This, BTW, is the reason I strayed from my resolve of one blogpost a day)

Before I come to what I thought about the movie, I shall establish that I strongly believe in the fact that everybody has a different take away from any movie, or from any art or subjective ‘thing’ that requires interpretation. That’s because everyone has had a different life and hence watches the movie (for example) in a different complex and hence is bound to have a different (even if slightly) interpretation. Best example of this for me is Inception – even though the possibility in interpretation was binary – that the top either tipped or didn’t, it still polarised the audiences to the extremes. There are still conversations that have been abandoned between me and other people because we couldn’t come to an agreeable conclusion about the damn top.

The other thing that I must establish, is that I am not a critique and this is not a review. I don’t review anything – not because I am afraid, but because (A) I am unequipped with enough knowledge on a subject to critique anything and (B) I endear to create art myself and hence I cannot have a neutral review. I do have opinions, however, obviously.

Coming to the movie, I thought it was brilliant, even though a tad bit long. But the feeling of drag was temporary and slight, and once the movie was over, it all faded away. Leo + MS combination is brilliant. I am remembering The Departed.

The movie, moreover, was many things for me.

It was a symbol of greed fuelled, capitalism supported decadence that permeates and lures not just the american society, but other societies as well. I personally know people who are not too different from Jordan Belfort. I personally have been that person as well, ofcourse with not as much money, but then it’s all relative always anyway. There were umpteen sequences that I could relate with completely. (Especially that 10 minute sequence of Leo OD’ing on something, crawling to his car, and then reaching home thinking all was cool and then waking up to a smashed piece of shit, for example.)

Not to say that there aren’t enough ‘good’ (non-decadent) people with truck loads of money. But fact of the matter is that generally their life stories are not hollywood movie material so they don’t come to light as much.  I have no data to back this assumption – it’s just a hunch.

It also spoke to me. I am at a major crossroads in life. Standing between roads that go in opposite directions when it comes to career, family, the city that I live in, love, money, dreams… Ok so it’s more like a roundabout with 10 exits! Problem is that I have to take minimum 5. How it Jordan Belfort’s story spoke to me was by showing me what ‘may’ lie ahead if I chose some of those paths. While I do attempt to be ‘good’, I know that I have tendencies to go all decadent if given a chance, and quite effortlessly at that. So the story provided material for introspection and pondering.

The only thing is, when do we really have the time for so much introspection and pondering?