Madoff’s scams explored in HBO’s ‘Wizard of Lies’
If there’s anything to be learned from HBO’s “The Wizard of Lies,” it’s that most people don’t ask a lot of questions when there’s money flowing.
The movie, airing Saturday, from Barry Levinson explores the fallout from Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme that swindled thousands of people out of billions of dollars.
Robert De Niro plays Madoff, who ran the highly successful scam that came crashing down in December 2008. The stock market meltdown two months before had caused the scheme to finally unravel.
The adaptation of Diana B. Henriques’ book of the same name assumes that you already know enough of the scandal, and so it doesn’t burden the audience with the complicated financial dealings. Simply put, Madoff used money from new investors to pay old ones and was able to keep the ruse up for years.
“Wizard of Lies” is a strange mixture. One of the astounding aspects of the scandal was that Madoff had kept the whole scam secret except for a few people on the 17th floor of his business. When the FBI raided his offices, most weren’t even aware of the 17th floor. There, Frank DiPascali (Hank Azaria) — a foulmouthed character who had worked for Madoff since he was a teen — managed the “real” transactions.
Meanwhile, his family, associates and investors thought the business was legit. Madoff traveled in the best of circles and had millionaires lining up to invest.
His sons Andrew (Nathan Darrow) and Mark (Alessandro Nivola) worked for him, and he had been married to his wife, Ruth (Michelle Pfeiffer), for more than 50 years. They had met when she was 13, and he was a 16-year-old lifeguard.
“Wizard of Lies” begins at the end of Madoff’s company. After the FBI swept in, he pleaded guilty. The rest of the story is told in flashbacks as he tells his story to a reporter while in prison. Over and over, he reasons that by keeping his family clueless, he was protecting them, but with his background — he had been the former chairman of NASDAQ — he had to know he was intentionally fooling himself.
There are some surreal moments in the film, as if this might be the only way to explain Madoff. One night, in a heavily drug-induced sleep, he hallucinates that he is in a hell with all the investors he cheated as songs from his youth — “The Great Pretender” and “Life Is but a Dream” — play on the soundtrack.
De Niro delivers an insightful performance as Madoff. He never overplays the character, who is often unreadable, a trait that undoubtedly served him well in selling his lies. At times, he’s thorny and petty. (Madoff berates his 8-year-old granddaughter when she asks about the Wall Street meltdown.) But there also seems a real affection for his family, particularly his wife.
When his sons want to know more about the business, he accuses them of being ungrateful and they back off. His wife assumes everything is above board and never questions when he asks her to transfer money around.
While Madoff acknowledged his crimes, he still sees his investors — even the small ones — as complicit, saying they were greedy and lacked “responsibility for their behavior.” Then excuses himself as always wanting to please people.
Meanwhile, everyone pays for Bernie’s sins. Some investors lost their life savings. One son would kill himself. Madoff, though, ridicules the idea that he could be compared to a sociopath like the serial killer Ted Bundy.
“I didn’t decapitate women,” he protests.
The film is a bit too long. “Wizard of Lies” has some worthwhile moments, but it never seems sure at what it’s trying to be. Eventually, it arrives where we knew it would, with Madoff, now 79, serving a 150-year prison sentence. It suggests he’s almost relieved not to be working so hard to be a fraud.