Generation Wealth (2018)

Too much of everything

Such a frustrating disappointment

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Critics are giving this film mixed reviews: 'A' for effort; 'D' for execution; and 'F' for depth. Mostly, I agree. But critics are missing a glaring, unseemly trait of the film. Above all else, Lauren Greenfield's 'Generation Wealth' is a one hour and 46 minute advertisement for Lauren Greenfield. It screams narcissism. There isn't anything inherently wrong with self examination on camera, it's just that Greenfield comes up empty. If you believe, as the filmmaker does, that 'money can't buy you love' is an earth-shattering epiphany worthy of a feature-length film, then you absolutely ought to pay the $12 fine to watch her navel gaze. Better still, cough up the $75 retail price for Greenfield's 500-page companion book, coincidently titled -- 'Generation Wealth.' (Why yes, it did take her 500 pages to warn against the excesses of consumer capitalism. Irony? Hypocrisy? Obliviousness?)Ms. Greenfield has stated that she examines the extremes of a social phenomenon in order to understand it. She also adds, gymnastically, that this is not a film about the 'one percent'. What I saw were several vignettes of (mostly) wealthy people looking dumb or pathetic for their greed and ambition. Apparently, plain old middle class folks demonstrate greed and ambition in ways that aren't nearly as cinematic. Probably more accurately, the vast majority of us who do not occupy the highest or lowest rungs of the socioeconomic ladder, could never leave the theater feeling good about ourselves if Greenfield hadn't offered up the low hanging fruit for us to bash.If you've seen the film and consider my thoughts on it unnecessarily harsh, please consider Greenfield's immeasurably superior 2012 film, 'The Queen of Versailles.' What does 'Generation Wealth' add to her eloquent thesis on the perils of consumer capitalism from the earlier film? Take your time, I'll wait...If you considered the film 'eye-opening' or 'important', you've been sleepwalking through life. Wealthy people, like most other people, want more stuff. Greed and excess and narcissism are not novel. The 'American Dream' is as elusive as it's always been. Nothing to see here but bling porn and self-promotion of an artist's overstuffed retrospective.I found 'Generation Wealth' an insulting vanity project that condescends to its audience by presenting simple explanations (disguised with an aura of profundity) for the complex set of circumstances it purports to depict. Especially insulting is the idea that the movie cares at all about a (never defined) generation and/or its relationship to wealth. Mostly the filmmaker needs an audience to assure her that her life's work has merit (by the way, much of it truly does) and that the time she missed from her sons' young lives was worth it. I almost feel foolish assuming that the film was meant for my edification and entertainment. For all Greenfield's gaudy self-indulgence, she neglects her audience by failing to deliver for us. It's not difficult to feel an odd kinship with her son who, when questioned about her absence makes clear "...the damage has already been done."

Greetings again from the darkness. John Lennon wrote "Money don't get everything, it's true. What it don't get, I can't use. Now give me money. That's what I want." Gordon Gekko said "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." Photographer-Director Lauren Greenfield (THE QUEEN OF VERSAILLES, 2012) has spent the past 25 years chronicling the excesses of society. She now lets us in on what she has seen under her microscope (camera lens). It's no surprise that we see a society that values money and beauty, no matter the cost. She also makes this very personal by confessing her own decisions and experiences along the way.Serving as her own videographer, Ms. Greenfield's film began as a photographic gallery exhibition, was published as a photography book, and has now morphed into a feature length documentary - one that blends much of her previous work. Her lens focuses on such varied subjects as celebrity kids, porn stars, eating disorders, the fashion world, beauty pageants for kids, high commerce, plastic surgery, family sacrifices, the end of the gold standard, and historical societies. It will likely cause you to blush, as well as shake your head in a disgusted all-knowing manner.An unusual lineup of interviewees includes author Bret Easton Ellis, whose "Less Than Zero" is acknowledged as an inspiration by Ms. Greenfield; porn star Kacey Jordan, whose affiliation with bad boy Charlie Sheen made tabloid headlines; former billionaire Hedge Fund Manager Florian Homm; a workaholic woman with no time for a family or life; a participant from "Toddlers and Tiaras"; and journalist Chris Hedges who offers up a history lesson.Every segment of the film is about excess. The beauty pageant kid crows "money, money, money". Mr. Homm croons "come to me" as if speaking directly to money. The son of a rock star (Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon) speaks to growing up wealthy, and a high school classmate of Kate Hudson recalls her spouting off about her famous parents. Ms. Jordan admits to hoping one of her sex tapes (she has "lots") will put her on top like it did for her hero Kim Kardashian. Mr. Hedges explains via the Great Pyramids, that societies accrue their greatest wealth at the moment their decline begins (which of course is an obvious mathematical certainty). His point is that all "great" societies of the past have crumbled, but he expects when it happens to us, it will bring down much of the world.As director Greenfield interjects her own family (including her two sons) into the film, we get the feeling she is either making amends or perhaps using the process as her own therapy for the sacrifices she made for her career ... a career that puts a magnifying glass to society. She discusses the emphasis on wealth during the Ronald Reagan Presidency, and even throws in a glimpse of similar excesses in China, Moscow, Ireland and Dubai. The old values of hard work and saving money have morphed into what has now become the new American Dream of consumption and luxury. It's a Kardashian society - or at least a society that dreams of living the life of a Kardashian. By the end of the film, the entertaining tales of Mr. Homm's lust for the almighty greenback has given way to a devastatingly sad (in a pitiful way) story unworthy of his cigar twirling. A Beverly Hills woman so desperate to purchase the hot new luxury handbag explains the "what's next" syndrome. The fixation, even addiction, to money, status, and physical beauty seems to be one that can't be cured ... though the film ignores those who don't share in the "dream". We are reminded to be careful what you wish for, and that "Money can't buy me love" ... or even much happiness. Ms. Greenfield's tale attempts to end with a lesson in values - hug those close to you, but the overall message is entirely too downbeat for such a final pick-me-up.

People are going to disagree about this movie. How you rate or value it is going to depend a lot on your own sense of aesthetics. You can call it complex, or murky; multi-layered, or muddled. It pulls from the projects of filmmaker Greenfield's whole life, which is certainly ambitious - many will say that it's too ambitious, and that the film completely loses focus. Others will say that focus is overrated.Greenfield presents images and stories of excess - mania for wealth - mania for commodities - desire to shape oneself as a commodity. This content combines in several narratives or patterns:(A) At times we are told (on several occasions by leftish moralist Chris Hedges) that this is a uniquely bad time in the history of our global civilization. We are told that crescendos of hedonism and greed inevitably mark the imminent deaths of empires and ways of life. This sense of the coming apocalypse is sometimes accentuated by musical and visual elements as in Koyaanisqatsi, say, which however did it better and more single-mindedly. I should say that I find Hedges' interventions to be kind of irritating, not because they're anti-capitalist, which I would take as a plus, but because I don't think they're particularly well grounded in theory.(B) Mingled with this, we see that for some individuals in the work the crash has already come, pointedly in the collapse of 2008. A hedge fund millionaire became a wanted fugitive; an Icelandic fisherman who became a bank employee had to go back to his boat; other persons experienced other kinds of bubble-bursting. But some of them have actually survived and accepted their new lives.(C) Another pattern one sees is that some of the people just grew out of it. Early in the film we see teenagers who, back in the 1990's when she first photographed them, were given to all sorts of unhealthy excesses. Then, today, 20 years or more later, they have gotten over it and became kind of okay people. This is a hopeful note, by the way. The excessive kids you are panicking about today may be a lot different after they have had a few years to mature.(D) But also on some level the film is really about Greenfield's own life - her experiences with her mother, whom she saw as obsessed with work, and with her own kids, who have seen her as obsessed with work. I should point out here that the farther the film progresses, the more it takes the position that "wealth" encompasses just about any thing that someone is overly obsessed with, such as work, one's body, having a child, and so on. You will hear that Greenfield "has always been photographing and reporting on wealth", but someone else can say "well, sure, once you have decided to define 'wealth' as just about anything, of course she has." Apparently this film is just one facet of her opus of oeuvre compilation, which we see has also produced a coffee-table book for people with very sturdy coffee tables.My own bottom line is that I am happy to have seen it, but then I'm pretty tolerant of ambiguity and of filmmakers pursuing their own visions even if they aren't exactly clear and don't have what you would call "a point" exactly. This may help you decide whether you will like it or not.

Generation Wealth (2018) was written and directed by Lauren Greenfield. This movie is hyped as being about the greed of modern society and what it does to the personality of wealthy people. It's not about that.This is a coming-of-age movie about the director and her parents. We see some interviews with women who are dissatisfied with their bodies, and who than have cosmetic surgery done. We see some interviews of women who have been hookers or porn stars or both.However, what we mostly see is Ms. Greenfield coming to grips with her mother. When her parents were divorced, Ms. Greenfield's mother left the children with their father. The got to see their mother every other weekend. In order to do this, they had to travel by plane to visit her, starting at ages five and seven.If this were truly a movie about greed, it might have worked. If this had been advertised as a movie about an adult confronting her mother about abandonment, it might have worked.It's neither of those. It's a self indulgent movie about a photographer who manages to hype her photo book while she tells her own story.This movie carries a terrible a IMDb rating of 5.7. Unfortunately, it's not that good.