10 Movie Scenes Everyone Always Gets Wrong
4. The Ending Doesn't Glorify Jordan Belfort, It Critcises The Audience - The Wolf Of Wall Street
The Wolf of Wall Street was another expertly crafted winner for Martin Scorsese, though invited spirited discussions about the tone and intent of the piece, which some criticised as overtly glorifying Wall Street fraudster Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio).
Especially polarising was the film's final scene, where Belfort is released from prison and embarks on a new career hosting seminars on sales technique to regular folk.
Many have interpreted the scene, in which Belfort asks his gawking audience to try and sell him a pen, as effectively deifying him as a one-in-a-million talent with a peerlessly unique knack for salesmanship, but the scene isn't doing that at all.
Really, the ending is a critique of the audience - both those at the seminar and those watching the movie - who hang on Belfort's every word and find his story of crooked greed aspirational.
Scorsese's final pan to a sea of blank, clueless faces is a pitch-perfect reflection of the movie's audience themselves, and that if we found Jordan's personality charming or his chaotic lifestyle appealing, his sales pitch clearly worked on us too.