Jessica Wall

I didn't really like this film. I won't go into plot or detail as that's been covered, just my thoughts on it. It's not as clever and funny as it thinks it is and it asks too much of an investment of time at two and a half hours long, especially with a loose and idiosyncratic pacing. I liked that I didn't really know where it was going but there were too many unbelievable elements, even for something as absurdist as this. I'm not sure rich people should be treated as a joke like this, since the insidious damage they do throughout every echelon of society is real and serious. It felt very self indulgent. There were interesting elements and I appreciate that it got me thinking, but, paradoxically, it indulges itself in some of the very traits in humanity that cause the super rich in the first place: namely ruthlessness and a lack of empathy for fellow human beings. It actually felt like an appeasement, crumbs thrown down to us peasants to stop us revolting, like, here watch these stupid greedy rich people suffer, this should be cathartic. Ok but ultimately that doesn't help break down the systems it's criticising, it's childish distraction, puerile grotesquerie. Maybe that's too much to ask of a film but with its running time and a central scene of an ideological battle between two characters quoting the likes of Marx and Thatcher at each other, it certainly seems like it has some lofty ambitions about what it wants to say. I think any right thinking person can agree that the existence of people with more money than they could possibly spend in a lifetime (many hundreds of times over) is a scourge on society. Maybe we tolerate them because we imagine we'd enjoy being in their position, but, newsflash, we never will be. This is a central tenet of capitalism: one day you could be in that privileged position so work to preserve a status quo that actively harms you in case you claw your way up. But, statistically, the likelihood of you getting this level of rich is basically non existent. Sometimes ordinary people are chosen to be stars to perpetuate that myth of attainability. However, billionaires aren't made through talent or hard work for the most part, but pure circumstance and luck, being in the right place at the right time. We alleviate billionaires by not buying into the myth of meritocracy and by not being like them, not indulging our basest selves in obscene greed, cruelty and commodifying humans and human suffering as they do. Monsters never think they are monsters and the cartoonish element of the characterisation of these people actually took away some of the power that they have in reality. Do you really think an arms dealer is going to be stupid enough to pick up a live grenade? It seems unlikely. I feel like this film plays too much into a capitalist narrative, maybe unintentionally. The rich want to see the poor as heathens who would slit their throats to have what they have, because that's what they've done to get where they are. It's not about just replacing those residing at the top but changing the shape of our societies. This just felt like an already privileged person's take down of the rich, it was ultimately a little too crude and naive. I do, however, enjoy Woody Harrelson in anything he does.