If you haven't seen The Wolf of Wall Street yet you can go to the next page, but chances are even if you have seen the movie you are still asking, "Wait, who was Emma?" Emma was the aunt of Naomi (Jordan Belfort's second wife) who acted as the executor on the Swiss bank account Belfort uses to funnel his illegal cash flow. We aren't given much backstory or character information on her, we pretty much just know that she is English and Belfort mistakenly thinks that she is flirting with him leading to one of the movie's more uncomfortable smooches. Her death isn't particularly tragic within the context of the film, in fact it occurs offscreen and we only hear about it through a crying Naomi. Belfort learning about her death is some of Leonardo DiCaprio's best acting in the movie (perhaps only eclipsed by the extremeness that is the Lemmon Quaalude scene) because the audience can almost instantly gauge that his upset reaction is not due to the fact that she is dead but that he might not have access to his money anymore. So the audience is forced to view her death the way Belfort does, with a mixture of annoyance and fear rather than genuine empathy. The fact that a literal relative dying means less to Jordan than his money does represents the film at its most satirical: the tragedy isn't necessarily that Emma dies, it's the way Belfort feels about it. Like the earlier throwaway line that one of the men who works at Stratton killed himself, the excess and debauchery at the core of the film distances the characters (and the audience) from the tragic undercurrent in the film. The Wolf of Wall Street is incessantly barking, but it still has a bitter bite.
Bryan Hickman is a WhatCulture contributor residing in Vancouver, British Columbia. Bryan's passions include film, television, basketball, and writing about himself in the third person.
