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"The mistake lies in seeing debate and discussion as secondary to the recovery of meaning. Rather, we should see them as primary: art and literature do not exist to be understood or appreciated, but to be discussed and argued over, to function as a focus for social dialogue. The discourse of literary or art criticism is not to recover meaning, but to create and contest it. Our primal scene should not be the solitary figure in the dark of the cinema but the group of friends arguing afterwards in the pub."
-Don Fowler (1996) "Even Better Than The Real Thing"

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - The Capitious Critic


"Jump! You fuckers!" - Even though the photo of a piece of cardboard bearing this invitation - held up by a demonstrator on Wall Street in the height of the financial crunch - came to worldwide fame, only few bankers obliged. Oliver Stone, avowing leftist and Chavez/Castro/Morales sympathiser, turns this fantasy into reality in his sequel to the 1987 Wall Street. After the crisis-related suicide of his mentor Louis (Frank Langella), investment banker Jacob Moore (played uninspiringly by Shia LaBeouf) vows vengeance against those responsible - ruthless capitalists who accept thousands of redundancies to make a quick buck. He sabotages an important oil extraction deal, earning him the attention of the most important bank's CEO (Josh Brolin), who promptly offers him a job. At the same time, his girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) must cope with her father's release from jail - the legendary Gordon Gekko (still Michael Douglas), who seems to have made a U-turn and publically warns against financial cataclysm, all the while promoting his new book.

Given the films topicality and Stone's political views you would expect a feature film version of Michael Moore's outstanding Capitalism: A Love Story. Instead, in an attempt to portray the meaninglessness of Ducatis, Bvlgari rings, tailor-made suits and Manhattan lofts, the director gets carried away and involuntarily expresses a fascination for such earthly pleasures. To compensate for this consumerist porn, Stone repeatedly shows us children playing with soap bubbles - to convince even non-attentive viewers of the film's profundity and symbolism. A supporting act by Susan Sarandon and cameo by Charlie Sheen (no doubt a favour to his old friend Oliver) add little substance. Money Never Sleeps continues Stone's spell of mediocre films that has lasted for more than a decade. The fact that Stone's last award nomination dates back to 1995 and Nixon pretty much sums up the situation.

6 comments:

  1. i felt the same way about the film. if i wanted to watch ten minutes of rich white dudes riding gazillion dollar motorcycles, I'd watch the fast and the furious. painful. "consumerist porn" indeed.

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  2. Garret, you can't disagree with me and you can't leave comments until you write a review.

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  3. Sheen was pretty tan in this movie.

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