Generation Wealth
Directed by: Lauren Greenfield
Written by: Lauren Greenfield
Documentary - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 26 Jul 2018
Written by: Lauren Greenfield
Documentary - 106 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 26 Jul 2018
The concept of obscene wealth and individuals desiring obscene wealth fascinate Lauren Greenfield. She already made a documentary called The Queen of Versailles in 2012 chronicling the loathsome Siegel family as they attempted to build the largest house in the United States until the recession hit and they ended up looking mighty foolish. Generation Wealth explores similar people and themes yet is more of a Lauren Greenfield ‘Best of’ collage of books and documentaries she created over the past 25 years. She revisits the entitled teenagers she profiled in the ‘90s, how China and Russia are fast becoming as materialistic as America, plastic surgery obsessives, a beauty queen toddler, and a dozen other oddball characters. Emitting a somewhat self-congratulatory feel, “I went through so many pictures,” Generation Wealth works when it unsettles us about the country’s moral decay, but staggers lost and aloof when Greenfield puts herself and her family in front of the camera – something she does far too often.
There is more than enough material for the documentary to explore why we chase extravagant wealth and what some of us opt to do with it when we get there. Therefore, why does Laura Greenfield opt to make an autobiographical film exploring why she is compelled to study the phenomenon? Who cares? Hypotheses such as it is what we see on television which makes us compare ourselves to the Kardashians instead of to our neighbors or it is because the United States took itself off the gold standard in 1971 are why Generation Wealth will intrigue the audience. Greenfield’s monotonous “my first book” this and “my next documentary” that does nothing to support a thesis or present another facet of the issue. There are so many shots of her magnet wall as she moves one picture from over there to over here, the wall merits a screen credit.
There is more than enough material for the documentary to explore why we chase extravagant wealth and what some of us opt to do with it when we get there. Therefore, why does Laura Greenfield opt to make an autobiographical film exploring why she is compelled to study the phenomenon? Who cares? Hypotheses such as it is what we see on television which makes us compare ourselves to the Kardashians instead of to our neighbors or it is because the United States took itself off the gold standard in 1971 are why Generation Wealth will intrigue the audience. Greenfield’s monotonous “my first book” this and “my next documentary” that does nothing to support a thesis or present another facet of the issue. There are so many shots of her magnet wall as she moves one picture from over there to over here, the wall merits a screen credit.
More than half Greenfield’s subjects fall on the quirky to funny spectrum. A gentleman named Limo Bob bedecked in gold chains creates the longest limousines in the world; how he maneuvers them around corners we do not learn. The man-boys in their 40s, including the son of a guy in REO Speedwagon, still fist-bump about which girls had the “best racks” back in high school. There are the Gordon Gekko worshipers and the truly strange Vegas hostess who parties with her son in nightclubs. The son emphasizes his mom is not a madam, if you get my drift. Why he feels the need to make sure we all understand that indicates all we need to know about what his mom is or is not.
However, when the quest for greenbacks is involved, hardship cases will follow as well. There is the mom addicted to plastic surgery she cannot afford; therefore, she lives out of her car instead of with her children. A porn star swept up in Charlie Sheen’s public meltdown details how good it felt to afford the hotel’s penthouse at the expense of a sensitive anatomical section torn in a painful adult film shoot. It is not revelatory, but shocking all the same, as Greenfield uncovers true-life examples of human beings opting to chase wealth at the expense of their children. There are also those cases of young money chasers morphing into stable adults shaking their heads at past mistakes, but that scenario appears to be the exception.
Greenfield would have a real film with a message on her hands if continued to plug at the underlying causes of our material obsessions and focused on applicable test cases of those doing it right versus those sacrificing at the altar of greed. She pokes at her own children with cameras until they plead with her to stop filming - it comes off like she wants us to believe she also has an addition, but to visual mediums instead of cash. At the cost of both momentum and coherence, Greenfield’s film gets swiss-cheesed by her hovering in the frames instead of separating herself from her subjects. The absurd lengths people go to for money is more than enough to fill the screen, nobody cares why Greenfield feels the need to document it.
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