Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987) gave the 1980s its self-portrait. Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, stands before the shareholders of Teldar Paper and announces: Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. The line was meant as criticism. Audiences walked out half-converted. A generation of bankers framed it.
Stone's film follows Bud Fox, a young broker, as Gekko picks him up, teaches him, and uses him. Bud is offered everything, takes most of it, and at last betrays Gekko by exposing the corporate raids he had been helping to conceal. The arc is biblical without being labeled — a young man tempted by a glittering father-figure, falling, and turning back at the cost of his career.
There is a verse for it, written by Paul to a young pastor he was mentoring:
"For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."
A Root, Not a Coin
The verse is often shortened to money is the root of all evil. That is not what it says. Paul writes carefully: the love of money. The Greek is philarguria — silver-loving, a love specifically directed at the metal. The metal itself is not damned. The directing of the heart toward it is.
Stone's film makes the same distinction. Bud's father, played by Martin Sheen — the actor's real-life son Charlie plays Bud — is a union worker at Bluestar Airlines. He has loved his pay-cheque for forty years without becoming Gordon Gekko. The film does not condemn earning. It condemns the appetite that no earning satisfies.
That appetite is the verse's love. Greek has more than one word for love. Paul did not pick agape or eros here. He picked the word for hoarding affection. The verb is what does the damage.
A Root, Not a Branch
Paul's image is botanical, not moral. He calls the love of money a root — rhiza — the underground organ that decides which plants will live. Roots are invisible, branching, persistent. They wander through soil. They starve other plants by getting to the water first.
The film visualizes this without quoting it. Gekko's empire is invisible — phone calls, shell companies, leveraged buyouts. The damage to Bluestar Airlines is visible only when the layoffs are announced. The root has been growing for years; the branches are noticed only when they fall.
The Sorrows the Verse Names
The verse's grimmest line is the third part: and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. The verb is peripeirō, to spear oneself. Paul means that the love of money is a self-inflicted wound. The injury comes from inside the lover.
The film's last act is exactly this. Bud is arrested. He weeps in the back of a car. Gekko, in a park, hits him repeatedly across the face. I gave you everything, Gekko shouts. The two men have been pierced by the same root. One will go to prison; one is already there in another sense.
What Stone Lets Stand
Stone does not preach. He films a final shot of Bud climbing the courthouse steps. The father, the union man, walks beside him. The verse leaves room for that walk. Some who coveted after, Paul writes, have erred from the faith. Not all. Not necessarily forever. The film keeps the door open by keeping the father in the frame.
The Forty Seconds
Read 1 Timothy 6:10 once. For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Forty seconds. In that time you can hear the slogan and the diagnosis at once. Greed is good is louder. The root is older.
The trading floor is the spectacle. The root is the verse. One grows in soil the camera never reaches.