The Wizard of Lies is a 2017 TV movie directed by Barry Levinson and written by Sam Levinson.
It is the story of the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time, the Madoff investment scandal
. The film opens with Bernie Madoff (Robert De Niro) being interviewed in prison. From there, the story unspools in a series of flashbacks, starting with Madoff confessing to his family. On December 10, 2008, Madoff informs his wife Ruth (Michelle Pfeiffer) and his sons Mark and Andrew that his investment advisory business, supposedly a $65 billion investment fund, is actually a Ponzi scheme. His sons turn him in and the next day he is arrested, and the scandal plays out from there.
Hank Azaria plays Frank DiPascali, Bernie's minion who ran his Ponzi scheme. Nathan Darrow plays his son Andrew.
Tropes:
- Anachronic Order: The film starts at the end of the story, with Madoff being interviewed in jail. From there Madoff's arrest and imprisonment plays out in a series of flashbacks, which are themselves interspersed with additional flashbacks from 2005 (an SEC investigation that Bernie bluffs his way out of), 2008 (Bernie's Ponzi scheme comes apart as the financial markets collapse), and, within a dream sequence, a flashback to 1987 when Madoff and Frank DiPascali begin the Ponzi scheme.note
- As Himself: Diana B. Henriques, who wrote the book The Wizard of Lies that was the source material for this film, appears as herself, interviewing Bernie Madoff in jail.
- As You Know: The Dream Sequence segment where Bernie and Frank begin the Ponzi scheme has some explanatory dialogue where they discuss Bernie's supposed "split-strike conversion" strategy.Bernie: You know how with a split-strike conversion strategy, the stock options offset losses?
Frank: It's like insurance. - Bearer of Bad News: After their father’s scheme collapsed, Mark and Andy cut him out of their lives, and refuse to speak to Ruth since she won't do the same. The first time Andy calls his mother in over a year, it’s because he has to tell her that Mark had just hanged himself.
- Blaming the Victim: Bernie is so focused on deflecting blame that he actually blames his victims for "letting" him take advantage of them, completely ignoring how they just trusted him because of his reputation of being an honest reliable man. He claims that they should have been more focused and should have looked for the signs. Even Diana Henriques is taken aback by Bernie's audacity.note Diana: It takes a a lot chutzpah for you of all people to say that.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: The scene where Ruth Madoff's hairdresser refuses to serve her anymore, is followed by a scene where a jittery Ruth, back at home, is trying to smoke a cigarette but is freaking out because she can't find a match.
- Death Wail: This is Ruth's reaction to finally receiving a call from Andy… only to hear the news about Mark.]]
- Disowned Parent: Bernie and Ruth suffer this from Mark and Andy for different reasons.
- Bernie suffers a permanent and complete and total disownment. They cut him out of their lives and refuse to ever acknowledge him as their father again for what remains of their lives. They don't accept calls and never visit him after the scene where he reveals to them the Ponzi scheme.
- Ruth is shut out because she's unable to bring herself to completely cut Bernie out of her life. In her own words, she's not as brave as her sons when it comes to cutting out the man she's been married to for fifty years. She never gets to reconnect with Mark before he commits suicide, but it eventually motivates her to choose to cut Bernie out of her life so she can have a relationship with Andy.
- Dream Sequence: The scene where Bernie and Ruth try unsuccessfully to kill themselves via an overdose of pills is followed by a surreal dream sequence of Bernie's. The dream sequence includes Bernie trying to excuse himself to his sons, as well as a sequence that is a flashback to 1987 and explains why Bernie started his life of crime (he was covering losses after the 1987 crash), and how he and Frank did it (they picked "yesterday's horse races", creating fake trades from old stock market data).
- Driven to Suicide
- A montage of Madoff victims includes the true story of a banker who slit his wrists in his office, but was thoughtful enough to stage a trash can to catch the blood as he bled to death.
- The emotional climax of the movie is Mark Madoff's suicide, when he hung himself in his apartment two years to the day after his father's arrest.
- Establishing Character Moment: The Hamptons beach party about 40 minutes into the film serves to demonstrate what an abrasive Jerkass Bernie Madoff really is. He is abusive to the food service staff, casually gropes attractive female guests, and, in a scene that shows his relationship with his sons, he demands that Mark switch out his steak dinner with a lobster dinner, even while Mark says that he doesn't like lobster because it gives him stomach problems.
- Exact Progress Bar: When Frank sees the FBI in the building he races back to the 17th floor and attempts to delete incriminating material from his computer. The "empty the recycle bin" icon is still showing bits of data being deleted, with a slowly progressing bar, when an FBI agent tells Frank to step away from his computer.
- Face Framed in Shadow: How Frank DiPascali's face is lit in his shadowy nook in the 17th floor, as he explains to Bernie that the Ponzi scheme is bleeding to death from all the huge institutional investors taking out their money as the markets collapse in 2008.
- Fatal Flaw: The movie goes into a lot of detail on Bernie Madoff’s Pride.
- Even in his own words, Bernie claims that his actions were motivated by his hating to disappoint people by admitting that he had failed.
- He repeatedly claims that if he’d been given a few more days to settle affairs, he would have been able to make sure that his family and loyal workers were provided for- even knowing that he was $50 BILLION in the red and the investigators would tear through his entire financial history.
- Finally, there was his response to Diana Henriques’s questions regarding what would happen if he died and left his fraudulent company in the hands of his sons. He not only insisted that he had set things up so carefully that the firm would continue to run without him, but that his sons would never be found responsible for the fraud. He stuck with this insistence even after seeing the way his family actually was torn apart by Guilt by Association.
- Film the Hand: Stephanie Madoff does this with a news camera as the paparazzi assault her and Mark on the street.
- Framing Device: Bernie Madoff's jailhouse interview with Diana Henriques is a framing device to tell the story of the Madoff scandal.
- Guilt by Association Gag: Very much Played for Drama. Ruth, Mark, and Andy are all turned into pariahs just for being Bernie's family despite having no involvement whatsoever in the Ponzi scheme. It isn't until after Mark commits suicide that sentiment shifts a bit, and then after Andy's death that this finally lightens up.
- How We Got Here: The opening scene shows Madoff in prison being interviewed by Diana Henriques. The story then plays out in a series of flashbacks.
- I Have No Son!: In his last scene, Andrew is asked about his relationship with his father after the scandal, and says "My father is dead to me." Ruth eventually distances herself from Bernie so that she can at least have a relationship with Andy, and even after she loses him to cancer, she chooses to cut Bernie out of her life entirely.
- I Know You Know I Know: In Real Life an investor named Jeffry Picower made massive withdrawals from his Madoff investment account, withdrawals so huge that many have speculated that Picower knew Madoff was a con artist and used that knowledge to bleed Madoff for billions. In this movie this is demonstrated in a scene where Picower approaches Madoff at a party, makes a series of sly comments pregnant with meaning, then says that "we'll have to discuss" him making further withdrawals, before creepily calling Ruth over and telling her that Bernie "needs looking after."
- Manly Tears: Mark Madoff breaks down crying as he reads to his wife the opening chapter of a memoir, in which he describes how his image of his father was shattered.
- Match Cut: There's a match between Frank cheerfully smoking a cigarette at Bernie's Hamptons beach party, to Frank smoking a cigarette at a much less happy interview with the FBI.
- Misplaced Retribution: A lot of hostility is given to Ruth, Andy, and Mark, none of whom were involved in the scheme. Their lives were completely upended and they were demonized and hated by so many people for something that they had no involvement in.
- Moody Trailer Cover Song: The trailers for this film used a cover of The Police's "King of Pain" by Valerie Broussard.
- Narrator: There are occasional bits of voiceover narration from Diana Henriques, like when she relates the stories of some of Madoff's victims or how she tells the viewer that Andrew Madoff died of cancer in 2014.
- Never My Fault: Bernie tries to displace blame away from himself for running the Ponzi scheme by saying that his clients were also just greedy people who weren't willing to question him. Diana calmly calls him out on it and has none of it.
- Never Speak Ill of the Dead: It's only after Mark commits suicide that public sentiment towards Mark and Andy start to shift, especially after Andy's cancer returns.
- No Sympathy: In the immediate aftermath of the scandal, no one gives Ruth, Mark, or Andy any sympathy for the losses they endured as a result of Bernie's actions. Most people automatically believe that they were involved in the scheme too, and treat them accordingly.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Mark and Andy both die before Ruth and Bernie. Mark commits suicide directly as a result of the destruction to his life after the scandal broke, and Andy died of cancer six years later.
- Ponzi: The biggest Ponzi scheme ever, as Bernie Madoff pretended to manage a $65 billion investment fund, when he was actually living large, for at least 15 years and probably more, off the money people sent him.
- The Sociopath: In the last scene Diana Henriques, in prison, points out that if the 2008 crisis hadn't happened and Bernie had kept going until he died, his sons would have been left holding the bag. Bernie deflects this and instead complains about a magazine article comparing him to Ted Bundy. The last line has Bernie asking Diana, "Do you think I'm a sociopath?". The clear implication is that he is, that he committed massive fraud and theft on an unprecedented scale with no consideration of the damage he was doing or the lives he was ruining.
- Stock Footage: News reports of the Madoff scandal, with Robert De Niro's face inserted. There's also a clip of Harry Markopolos, the analyst who figured out that Madoff had to be a Ponzi schemer and tried to blow the whistle, being interviewed before a Congressional committee.
- Trauma Conga Line: Bernie Madoff's family is just demolished after the scandal breaks. All of their lives are completely upended, and they're completely shunned by a society that believes they were involved. It drives Mark's individual nuclear family apart, until he commits suicide. And then Ruth loses Andy to cancer, leaving her completely alone.
- Uncomfortable Elevator Moment: Ruth Madoff's tumble from social grace is demonstrated in a scene where she takes the elevator down from the penthouse, and cringes in embarrassment when other residents who know who she is get on with her.
- World's Smallest Violin: A bitter Madoff employee named Reed confronts Andrew Madoff in public. When Andrew says that he lost everything too, an enraged Reed makes the typical hand gesture and says it's "the world's tiniest violin playing the world's saddest song."
