Generation Wealth

Generation Wealth is a documentary film from 2018 directed by the award-winning photographer and filmmaker, Lauren Greenfield. Surge of the global wealth and the insatiable desire to increase it plays the pivotal part in the delineation portrayed in the narrative of the movie. Greenfield, whose prior work has persistently explored societal obsession with wealth and image, stands front and center in this analyse about the increase of wealth obsession and its impact on society.

The film brings together some of her most renowned works over the past 25 years, such as “Fast Forward”, “Girl Culture”, “The Queen of Versailles”, and “thin”. In Generation Wealth, Greenfield surveys the idea of wealth not merely as monetary assets, but as an aspiration touching upon fame, beauty, youthfulness and inevitability on a global scale.

Interestingly, the film isn’t merely about condemning the ultra-wealthy and their conspicuous consumption. Greenfield justly acknowledges her own involvement in the escalation of this value system, in particular by pondering on her multiple roles as a documentarian, mother, and individual also seduced by the allure of limitless wealth. She does not merely document the symptoms of wealth, she seeks to decipher it, shone from perspectives as varied as Jeff Gordons, the American stock trader who just before the financial crisis in 2008 describes money as a drug, to Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who speaks about the harms of a society that worships wealth.

Also starring American novelist Bret Easton Ellis, known for his satirical style and portrayal of high society in his fiction, and Paris Cronin, Greenfield’s adolescent son, among others, Generation Wealth can be viewed as a self-portrait of sorts. The film is Greenfield's personal recollection of unprecedented occurrences of world-changing events, boiling the chaos of mass culture down to human-scale.

Despite the title, Generation Wealth is not just about the burgeoning wealth of the new generation, it's about the cultural shift that has allowed wealthiest 1% of the population to amass more than half the world's wealth. The movie provides an in-depth look into the lives of the immensely wealthy, diving into the irrational desire for more even when it is clear that it is damaging to the individual and society as a whole.

There's an emphasis on women in the movie, as Greenfield analyzes the double-edged sword of contemporary women's liberation. As women have gained the power to be as ruthlessly competitive as men, some have also become obsessed with becoming physically desirable commodities, often at the expense of their well-being.

Greenfield also scrutinizes the way wealth impacts children, with depictions of child pageants and interviews with children who have been raised in significant wealth. However, Generation Wealth is not an endorsement or criticism of the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but a contemplative exploration of our collective fascination with wealth and status.

Certain narratives in the film haunt more than others, such as that of a woman struggling with her plastic surgery addiction, or another who has taken up work in the adult film industry to pay off her family’s debt. It unearths a worldwide preoccupation with increasing wealth and image, drawing parallels to the opioid crisis in the way that addiction to wealth and the pursuit of material success are seldom fulfilling, leading to a cycle of endlessly wanting more.

A fascinating and eye-opening piece of filmmaking, Generation Wealth explores the human cost of capitalism, narcissism and greed, serving to remind us that wealth and materialism can often be a mask for deeper societal and individual issues. Through the striking imagery of Greenfield’s photography and the range of interviews included in the film, it examines the toll that this obsession can take on personal relationships, self-image, and mental health.

Generation Wealth is more than a movie, it's a cultural documentation over a 25-year period that charts the global rise of materialism, celebrity culture, and social status. It’s a moving painting that thematically strings ambition, exploitation, delusion, debauchery, wealth, excess and the corroding effect the quest for more can have on a society and the individuals, highlighting the idea that the more we have, the emptier we become.