Guardian - 22 January 2018, 04:19 (+ 2288 days 23 hours and 15 minutes) Movies & TV
Latest film from Queen of Versailles director Lauren Greenfield is at its best when examining consumer capitalism but suffers from an uneven toneLauren Greenfield skewered the fall from grace of two members of America’s moneyed elite in the brilliant Queen of Versailles, and returns to similar territory in Generation Wealth. This time her target is the entire edifice of consumer capitalism and concept of modern wealth, making for an ambitious essay documentary that is often brilliant but is let down by a parallel focus on Greenfield’s own family and career which becomes too sentimental and stretches the film out beyond its natural length.The misdirection of the family and personal sequences is frustrating because otherwise, when Greenfield is talking about other people, she’s superb. Returning to the subjects of her photography from the last 25 years, she presents a cast of rogues demonstrating the psychological tragedy of wealth. We drift in and out of their lives, with Greenfield musing on wealth’s catastrophic impact personally, nationally and globally. A real highlight is former hedge fund manager Florian, an over-confident German who shouts when he gets excited and is living in exile, unable to return to the US for fear of prosecution for fraud. Continue reading...