Sometimes Slow Motion is more than just a stylistic flourish. Sometimes it is an obstacle for the characters. In The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort spends a great deal of time under the influence of every drug from cocaine to the now-infamous Quaaludes. The scene I am referring to, of course, is the major comic highlight of the film, but the best use of slow motion occurs much earlier when Jordan Belfort's narration introduces the Quaalude to the audience. At a specific point of the movie (one of the lesser debaucherous parties across the hectic 3 hours) the entire scene freezes and starts to go by at a crawl, as Belfort wryly remarks, "looks like those 'Ludes are working their magic on Donny right now". Not only is the painfully slow motion of this scene hilarious, but it serves as excellent setup for when Donny & Jordan are nearly completely incapacitated by several powerful Quaaludes at the key point in the plot. As Jordan describes the Quaalude in detail, Scorsese allows the audience to linger on the motion of everyday items, as viewed through someone who's brainpower is inhibited by some very powerful drugs. Slow motion is also employed at sparse intervals throughout the rest of the film to indicate similarly drugged-out perspectives, but no scene comes as close to capturing the humour and fascination of the Quaalude as when Belfort first introduces us to his second favourite drug (after money, of course).
Self-evidently a man who writes for the Internet, Robert also writes films, plays, teleplays, and short stories when he's not working on a movie set somewhere. He lives somewhere behind the Hollywood sign.
