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About two minutes into HBO‘s The Wizard of Lies, you might get chills. As the eerie score swells and we are introduced to Bernard L. Madoff (Robert De Niro at his brutal best), inmate number 61727-054, we take in every line on his face. It’s hard not to scan it for signs of remorse. It’s even harder to find any signs of remorse whatsoever. Diana B. Henriques, an investigative reporter for the New York Times and the first writer to visit Madoff in prison, describes her encounter with Madoff with some fascination as we watch Madoff sit down with her. “In our conversation, he seemed relaxed, unfailingly candid, earnest, and trustworthy. That is his talent… and his curse,” Henriques recounts. “That is what enabled him to pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme on record. 65 billion dollars.”
Henriques, who also wrote the book the film is based on, plays herself in the film. While Madoff’s crimes had been documented a plethora of times, she was more intrigued by the story of a man tearing his family apart – specifically his sons, Mark and Andrew, played with stunning vulnerability by Alessandro Nivola (American Hustle, A Most Violent Year) and Nathan Darrow (House of Cards). Handling the film’s subject material is no easy feat, but the manner in which director Barry Levinson takes on the infamous Bernie Madoff scandal is patient and disturbing. This man – a sociopath of sorts who evidently contributed to the financial devastation of both big-time investors and everyday people – pled guilty to 11 federal felonies and was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for his crimes.
The film takes us back to his admission in 2008 and focuses on a small span of a few years, and that is why it succeeds. Many biopics trip over themselves when they attempt to capture an entire individual’s life in a two-hour span, but The Wizard of Lies intelligently hones in on the period of time in which Madoff’s downfall began, and the few events leading up to it. Framed with the interviews between Henriques and Madoff, this effective home base that the film returns to at pivotal moments serves it incredibly well. While the entire supporting cast – Michelle Pfeiffer, Nivola, Darrow, and Hank Azaria in particular – deliver breathtaking performances, the riveting film is really a showcase for exactly what made Robert De Niro the legend he is today. While he’s unfortunately been involved with a series of low-grade flicks that have overshadowed his greatness, The Wizard of Lies restores all faith in his talents.
Over the course of the film’s two hours, De Niro engages in a game of hubris olympics. When we are first introduced to him, he’s resolved to come clean to his sons and figure things out, and it’s almost easy to pity him – but then you’re reminded of just how terrible and ignorant he truly is. “It’s all one big fuckin’ lie,” he tells his family. They evidently turn him in, and his arrest scene – in which he quietly welcomes the FBI into his apartment and removes his tie, shoelaces, jewelry, belt, and personal effects – is breathtaking. De Niro plays his remorseless narcissism with a compelling, infuriating honesty. The psychological complexity at play here is executed beautifully; the hallucinations (and reactions to them) he experiences during his suicide attempt are flooring, and the exploration of the catastrophic events his actions had on his family – including his eldest son’s suicide – is done with grace and discipline. When Henriques attempts to break him down by reminding him what he’s done to Ruth, Mark, Andy, and the thousands of individuals he defrauded, he never comes close to seeming contrite: “It’ll kill me for the rest of his life,” he says. The impassive expression on his face, however, does not suggest this at all, and it’s a summation of the film’s condemnation of Madoff as a whole.
It’s truly unsettling to watch De Niro embody this man, and the film smartly never tries to humanize him; what Madoff did was unthinkable, and he’s certainly not the super-genius he believes himself to be. De Niro’s interpretation of this greed-driven, grandiose villain is not sympathetic; it’s intimate and unforgiving, and makes Madoff a more frustrating figure than ever. If we ever doubted De Niro, now’s as good a time as ever to repent. The man may have made his fair share of flops, but if that’s what it takes for him to deliver us films like The Wizard of Lies, we’ll gladly endure a few more Dirty Grandpas.
