Generation Wealth

"Generation Wealth" image via documentary.org.

One might expect Lauren Greenfield's 2017 documentary, Generation Wealth, to be a polemic against capitalism, wealth excesses, and inequality, but one would be wrong. (In the current environment of politics-is-everything progressive critics have criticized the film for not being a bash-fest of Trump's America.)

If there's any one over-riding theme, it's the quest for status. The interviewees believe that personal worth is synonymous with social recognition, itself obtained by money but also by personal attractiveness. Status-seeking is more than an American phenomenon; vignettes of Chinese billionaires and Russian oligarchs show that the quest is common to human beings everywhere.

The audience is tempted to sneer at parents who enter their children in beauty contests, the plastic-surgery addicts, the hedge-fund mansion-builders, and the privileged scions of L.A. celebrities. (Lauren Greenfield has been chronicling the latter since she went to high school with them in the early 1990's; her father recounts how she was embarrassed to have her classmates over to her house.) She re-interviews them years later, and most of the subjects now realize that they have grossly misplaced their priorities.

The filmmaker is honest enough to turn the camera on herself. She accepts assignments thousands of miles away for weeks, even months. She knows that she should spend more time at home, but her husband willingly looks after their pre-teen children, so she averts the hard choices.

Though the subject is ostentatious wealth, I suspect that the film is really about the obsessive pursuit of money, status, beauty, and workplace validation. Relationships with children, or even having children in the first place, are neglected. By the end of the movie the film-maker and the audience relate to these people, who seemed at first glance to live in a different universe of values and lifestyles.

Generation Wealth is not light entertainment, but it's interesting and not a heavy slog. It's available as a Netflix DVD rental and is streaming free to Amazon Prime Video customers. Recommended.