Just after Christmas, when I suggested to three friends that we go see The Wolf of Wall Street, Maddie, the lone woman in the group, refused. She wasn't objecting to the movie's treatment of her gender, its nonstop dirty language, or its graphic sex -- all of which have been extensively dissected. Her objection: She didn't want to give any money (even a tiny portion of her $12 ticket) to Jordan Belfort, who wrote the book that inspired the movie. She hates the idea that Belfort got rich from conning clients, went to jail for it, and now is again making money by selling the story of how he did it. (In truth, Belfort is required to fork over half of what he makes from the film to the victims of his crimes and claims he's chosen to give away all his payments from the movie.)

    Indeed, in the few weeks since The Wolf of Wall Street hit theatres, journalists and critics have flooded the web with articles about whether the film sufficiently condemns Belfort's actions, or whether it irresponsibly invites us to celebrate him.

    The irony, though, is that Martin Scorsese's movie really doesn't tell the story of exactly how Belfort landed in jail. It spends very little of its three-hour running time on what he was doing illegally. In that regard, and contrary to how it looks from trailers, it isn't much of a business movie.

    When The Wolf of Wall Street opens, we get a splashy montage of the spoils of quick wealth: giant mansion; opulent yacht; and Leo DiCaprio, as Belfort, speeding in his convertible while his trophy wife, er, attends to him. Then we rewind. We watch Belfort land a job as a stockbroker with Rothschild; he's soon laid off and finds a job in Long Island with a penny-stock outfit called Investors Center. It's at these stints that we get our only glimpses in the film of Belfort doing actual business: We see him fast-talking, selling some chump a ton of shares in a no-name stock that comes with a 50% commission for the broker. We see him coaching colleagues on how to do it.

    By the time Stratton Oakmont moves out of the garage and into real offices, the movie is pretty much done showing us the mechanics of how Belfort got rich. It's interested only in the extravagance of his wealth. Sure, much of the movie takes place in Stratton's offices, but never to show people conducting business. Wolf of Wall Street would have you think new employees were ushered straight to the back room for drugs and hookers without ever having to earn any money. This is a film about a drug addict. It's a film for which, appropriately, the lead actress slugged three tequila shots before shooting a big scene.

    圣诞节刚过，我向三位朋友提议一起去看《华尔街之狼》(The Wolf of Wall Street)。但玛蒂，一行人中唯一的女性，不愿意去。她抗拒的并不是这部电影对待女性的方式，无休无止的脏话，甚至也不是非常暴露的色情场景——所有这些方面都已被人深入剖析过。她抗拒的理由是：她可不想给乔丹•贝尔福特(这部电影改编自他的著作）送钱，哪怕后者只能获得12美元电影票中极其微小的一部分。一想到贝尔福特靠欺诈客户发了大财，并因此锒铛入狱，现在竟然通过贩卖自己的行骗故事来赚钱，她就恶心不已。（事实上，贝尔福特被要求将他从这部电影中赚得的一半收益赠与其犯罪行为的受害者，他最终选择捐出所有收益。）

    事实上，《华尔街之狼》上映后的几个星期以来，各路记者和影评人已经在网络上发表了无数文章，纷纷质疑这部电影是否充分地谴责了贝尔福特的行为，是否是在不负责任地诱导我们为他庆贺。

    但具有讽刺意味的是，马丁•斯科塞斯执导的这部电影其实并没有详细讲述贝尔福特身陷大牢的详细过程。在长达3个小时的播放时间内，它几乎没有讲述他究竟做了哪些非法勾当。就这方面而言，不同于预告片给人的感觉，它并不具备大量商业电影应有的元素。

    《华尔街之狼》上映后，一系列迅速发家的战利品以蒙太奇手法冲入观众的眼球：巨型豪宅、豪华游艇，莱昂纳多•迪卡普里奥饰演的贝尔福特驾驶一辆敞篷轿车飞驰而过，一旁的娇妻正在“侍奉”他。画面随后回放。我们看到贝尔福特在罗斯柴尔德集团(Rothschild)谋得了一份股票经纪人差事；他很快就被解雇，随后在长岛一家名叫投资者中心(Investors Center)、经营低价股的投资公司找到了一份工作。在这部电影中，为数不多的贝尔福特做实际业务的场景就是出现在这段任职期间。我们看到巧舌如簧的贝尔福特向一些笨蛋出售一堆连名字都没有的股票，然后从中赚取高达50%的经纪人佣金。我们看到他正在向同事们传授这些骗人的伎俩。

    等到Stratton Oakmont投资公司离开车库，搬入真正的办公室时，这部电影基本上就讲完了贝尔福特发家致富的奥秘。它只对主人公挥霍财富的方式感兴趣。没错，许多场景发生在Stratton公司的办公室内，但根本就没有展示这群人的营商之道。《华尔街之狼》或许会让你认为，这些新员工不必辛苦赚钱，就被径直引入密室，过上了滥用毒品，声色犬马的生活。这是一部关于瘾君子的电影。据说女主角在拍摄大场面前总要猛喝三口龙舌兰酒，就这部电影而言，这样的举动似乎恰如其分。

    What they were actually doing at Stratton Oakmont was very simple, a variation on what many call "pump and dump." Stratton would push penny stocks on unwitting investors to drive the price up, then sell its own holdings and reap the profit. If you don't already know about such schemes you're not going to learn about it from this movie beyond the scripted sales pitch Belfort creates. The movie version of Belfort starts to explain some of his machinations directly to the camera only to interrupt himself and say "But you don't care about any of this. All you care about is whether we made a shitload of money." In fact, the "dump" half of the equation is almost completely absent. We never see Belfort or his people selling off equities like crazy. (They do it very late in the film with the Steve Madden (SHOO) stock they brought public; that's about it.)

    The Wolf of Wall Street is no more about Wall Street than Blow is about cocaine. (Wall Street, Too Big to Fail -- these are movies about Wall Street.) It's a portrait of a man who goes absolutely insane on his wealth: drugs, drugs, sex, and more drugs. The title and marketing of the movie have often been misleading: It isn't about a stock swindler bringing the market to its knees, but a guy who becomes rapidly indulgent thanks to having made a lot of money in a short time -- how he made that money is treated as almost irrelevant. The character in the film could just as easily have gotten rich from selling an Internet startup or from an inheritance.

    In this movie, Jordan Belfort could have been a young mafia guy like drugged-out Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos. Questions about whether the film condones or condemns Belfort's financial crimes are pointless because the movie doesn't care. For proof of that indifference, look no further than this strange video testimonial DiCaprio recorded for Belfort in August: "Jordan stands as a shining example of the transformative qualities of ambition and hard work," he says. Ambition, okay. Somehow the hard work part was left out of the movie.

    A more fitting title for the movie (and book) would have been The Wolf of Quaaludes. (Besides, Danny Porush, upon whom Jonah Hill's character Donnie Azoff is based, told Mother Jones he doesn't recall anyone ever calling Belfort a wolf; the real-life Forbes profile of Belfort -- unlike the one depicted in the movie -- did not use the nickname at all.)

    So what's a moviegoer hungry for a good business flick to do? Let us direct you to A Hijacking, a Danish film released in the U.S. last June that didn't get the attention it deserves. The movie's plot mirrors Captain Phillips -- Somali pirates hijack a cargo ship -- but with a key difference: More than half of the movie focuses on the ship company's CEO, holed away in his safe office, who takes it into his own hands (against expert advice) to lead negotiations with the hijackers by phone and fax. Once the ship gets taken hostage early on, nothing much changes on the boat, but the action at corporate HQ is thrilling as top exec Peter Ludvigsen deals with pressure from the board of directors to handle the crisis not as a matter of life and death but as a business transaction aimed at saving money. Watching him break down is difficult and fascinating, and raises important ethical questions about doing business -- questions The Wolf of Wall Street isn't interested in.

    他们在Stratton Oakmont公司做的事情非常简单，其实就是一种被许多人称为“拉高出货”(pump and dump)的经营策略的变体。这家公司怂恿不知情的投资者购买低价股，以推升股价，然后抛售自己持有的股票，进而谋取巨额利润。如果你此前不了解这类骗局，除了贝尔福特照本宣科式的推销辞令，你依然不会从这部电影中了解到这方面的经验教训。在这部电影中，直面镜头的贝尔福特解释了一些骗人把戏，随后打断自己，说道，“但你不必关心这些事情。你只需要关心，我们是不是赚到了一大堆钱。”实际上，这个公式中的“出货”部分几乎完全不存在。我们根本没有看到贝尔福特或其他人发疯般地抛售股票。【直至电影的尾声，他们才出售了该公司推动上市的史蒂夫•马登鞋业公司(Steve Madden)的股票；仅此而已。】

    《华尔街之狼》与华尔街无关，就像《美国毒枭》(Blow)与可卡因无关一样——《华尔街》(Wall Street)和《大而不倒》(Too Big to Fail)才是讲述华尔街故事的商业电影。它讲述了一位男子疯狂挥霍财富的故事，他不断地吸毒，享受性爱，然后继续吸毒。这部电影的名称和营销手法往往带有误导性：它讲述的不是一位股票骗子让股市陷于瘫痪的故事，而是一位男子因短时间内赚取巨额财富而迅速变得放荡不羁的故事，他怎么赚到这笔钱被视为一件与影片主旨几乎毫无关系的事情。主人公完全可以是通过出售一家互联网公司或者继承了一笔遗产而轻松地变成了富豪。

    在这部影片中，乔丹•贝尔福特本来有可能成为一位像《黑道家族》( The Sopranos)中吸毒成瘾的克里斯托弗•莫尔蒂桑蒂那样的古惑仔。那些质疑《华尔街之狼》究竟是纵容还是谴责贝尔福特金融罪行的问题毫无意义，因为这部电影根本就不关心这档事。要寻找这种漠不关心的证据，你只需看一看迪卡普里奥在8月份为贝尔福特录制的那段奇怪的视频就知道了。“乔丹为具有变革意义的雄心壮志和辛勤工作等品质树立了一个光辉榜样，”他说。雄心壮志？的确有。但这部电影似乎并没有交代他是如何“辛勤工作”的。

    对于这部电影（和原著）而言，一个更贴切的名称或许应该是《安眠酮之狼》( The Wolf of Quaaludes)。【只不过，在接受《琼斯母亲》杂志( Mother Jones)采访时，丹尼•波鲁什（乔纳•希尔饰演的唐尼•阿佐夫的原型）声称，他不记得有人曾经把贝尔福特叫做狼；《福布斯》( Forbes)一篇关于贝尔福特本人的特写报道——与这部电影描述的形象完全不同——根本就没有使用这个昵称。】

    那么，影迷们究竟渴望一部商业电影佳作讲述什么故事呢？我建议你去看《怒海劫运》(A Hijacking)。去年6月份在美国上映时，这部丹麦电影并没有获得应有的关注。它的情节与讲述索马里海盗劫持一艘货船的电影《菲利普斯船长》(Captain Phillips)有些类似，但有一个重大区别：这部电影超过一半情节都集中在安稳地坐在办公室中的航运公司CEO身上。他没有听从专家意见，决定亲自处理此事，通过电话和传真与劫持者直接谈判。影片刚一开始，这艘轮船就被劫持，自那以后，船上本身并没有发生多少故事，但公司总部却上演了惊心动魄的一幕：这位名叫彼得•卢德维格森的高管面临来自公司董事会的巨大压力。董事们并不认为这是一场生死攸关的危机，而是把它看成一项旨在节省成本的商业交易。观看他一步步陷于崩溃是一件让人难以接受、但很有吸引力的事情。这部影片由此提出了一些关于经商伦理的重要问题，而《华尔街之狼》对这类问题并不感兴趣。

    In addition to the classics you know, like Barbarians at the Gate and Pirates of Silicon Valley,there are other modern movies that do give viewers a lot of actual business. In Good Company,from 2004, was about a good-guy salesman pushing print ads for Sports America who suddenly has to answer to a flashy young suit when the little media company gets bought out by Globecom. The movie looks like a romance between Topher Grace and Scarlett Johansson, but that relationship ends fast, and we see the real story is an old-school businessman trying to stay afloat through consolidation in a struggling industry. The hilarious scene in which much-revered "Teddy K!" (Malcolm McDowell) visits the office to discuss synergy ought to be more famous than it is.

    Will Smith's 2006 film The Pursuit of Happyness, too, is a legitimate business flick, also about a stockbroker, also based on a true story: When Chris Gardner lands an internship at Dean Witter we get long scenes of Gardner busting his butt to sell to clients any way he can: by phone, in person, at a 49ers game. Even P.T. Anderson's 2007 epic There Will Be Blood is more concerned with the mechanics of building a business than Wolf is. Daniel Day-Lewis's Daniel Plainview builds his oil empire one town at a time, and it costs him everything: At the end he is a miserable murderer alone in his giant house, lying on the floor of his bowling alley, screaming for his butler. (His punishment, it seems, is much more dire than Belfort's in Wolf.) Up in the Air,about a corporate downsizer, devotes large chunks of screen time to the gritty reality of its protagonist's work firing people and is sensitive to the human toll.

    Say what you will about The Wolf of Wall Street and its celebration of excess -- just don't head to the theatre looking for a story of Wall Street greed and corporate mischief. The movie stays pretty true to Belfort's book, which is also more focused on the wealth than on how he got it. It's no accident that the phrase "penny stock" appears in the book only eight times. "Coke" and "'ludes?" About 50 times each.

    除了大家知道的经典作品，比如《门口的野蛮人》( Barbarians at the Gate)和《硅谷传奇》(Pirates of Silicon Valley)，还有一些电影为影迷们展现了大量真实的商业场景。2004年上映的电影《大公司小老板》(In Good Company)讲述了一位推销员的故事。这位老好人原本是《体育美国》杂志(Sports America )的一位印刷广告推销员，但在这家小媒体公司突然被Globecom公司并购后，他不得不向一位时髦花哨的年轻主管汇报工作。这部电影看上去好像是一段发生在托弗•格雷斯和斯嘉丽•约翰森之间的浪漫故事，但这种关系迅速终结，我们发现它其实讲述的是一个被行业整合大潮裹挟的老派商人试图维持经营的故事。那个欢闹的场景，也就是备受尊敬的“Teddy K!”（马尔科姆•麦克道威尔饰演）走进主管办公室，打算商量协作问题，原本应该比现在更广为人知。

    此外，威尔•史密斯2006年主演的《当幸福来敲门》(The Pursuit of Happyness)也是一部合格的商业电影。那部电影主人公也是一位股票经纪人，同样改编自一个真实故事——克里斯•加德纳在添惠公司(Dean Witter) 获得了一份宝贵的实习生工作，影片随即用几段很长的场景描述他竭尽全力向客户推销理财产品的过程：打电话，会面，奔赴旧金山49人橄榄球队比赛现场，加德纳采用了他能够采用的一切方式。就连P.T. 安德森在2007年执导的史诗巨制《血色将至》(There Will Be Blood)也比《华尔街之狼》更加关注构建一家企业的机理。丹尼尔•戴-刘易斯饰演的丹尼尔•普莱恩维尤在一个城镇构筑起自己的石油帝国，并为此付出了一切：影片结束时，独居在豪宅的主人公变成了一位悲惨的杀人凶手，他躺在自己保龄球馆的地板上，厉声呼喊自己的管家（他受到的惩罚似乎要比《华尔街之狼》中的贝尔福特可怕得多）。《悬而未决》(Up in the Air)则讲述了一位解雇专员的故事。这部影片用大量的放映时间逼真地描述了主人公在解雇员工时遭遇的艰辛世事，非常敏锐地直面了裁员这个社会问题。

    不管你如何评价《华尔街之狼》和它对奢靡生活的礼赞——走向电影院时，请不要期望可以观赏到一个讲述华尔街之贪婪和公司之恶行的故事。这部电影非常忠实于贝尔福特的原著，这本书同样更加侧重于享受财富的过程，而不是他获得这些财富的方式。所以，“低价股”一词在这本书中仅出现了8次，而“可卡因”和“安眠酮”各自出现了大约——50次，绝不是出于偶然。（财富中文网）

    译者：叶寒